Updates on the aftermatch of shooting in Kraków

10. 11. 2026 / Tomasz Oryński

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- the shooter died from his injuries in early hours of Monday morning. The investigation will be continued regardless.

- all the victims have been named and their families have been informed. They are three Polish women aged 61, 53 and 47, a 32yo British man, 51yo Austrian woman and 50 years old Polish man, along with shooter’s parents and sister murdered in their home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. As of Monday morning, 15 people were still in Kraków’s hospitals. Doctor describe condition of 14 of them as “stable”.

 
- the condition of the two hero police officers, Artur Morański and Jakub Kulik, have improved, although officer Kulik is still in critical condition. There are reports that both have been woken up from coma and at least Morański is conscious, he was even visited by one of the government ministers. He’s first words are reported to be a question if his partner is OK.

- the investigation continues. The prosecutor in charge informed that they are still trying to establish exact number of shots fired, but they already know it was many – probably even hundreds. 

- four guns and four mobile phones were found on the shooter and in his car. He carried about 500 pieces of ammo with him too. Further 7 pieces of weaponry were found in the flat in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.

- the shooter family was murdered while asleep with two gunshots to the head each, probably sometime during the night from Friday to Saturday. The shooter also killed two family cats with a single shot each. None of the neighbours noticed any noises.

- there was a yellow flag with snake and slogan “don’t thread on me” found hanging in the shooter’s room, but prosecutors so far haven’t found anything else that could confirm his alleged right-wing allegations. According to onet.eu journalist some notes were taken for further analysis.

- there were several crowd funders set up to help the injured policemen. The biggest one so far accumulated over 6 million Polish złoty (https://zrzutka.pl/bohaterowie), but there are several smaller ones too.

- on Sunday the blood bank of the Polish Red Cross for Kraków District issued an appeal to people to no longer come forward with blood donations, as they were at full capacity already. People still donate blood en masse in other blood banks across the whole country.

- there are reports about bravery from random witnesses. It is beyond doubt that the life of the policemen had been saved only thanks to the fact that two of the top surgeons in Kraków  - prof. Michał Pędziwiatr and dr Mateusz Werdak - happened to have dinner with their familes in the nearby restaurants. They rushed to provide first aid, dr Werdak stopped the policemen’s bleeding by stuffing as much first aid dressing as he could into the gun wound and then applying pressure with his bare hands until ambulances arrived. They could only operate with what they could found in police officer’s first aid kits and had help from one of the officers who was trained in first aid. Some reports also indicate there was another random doctor amongst the witnesses who also helped.

On the order of those doctors the policemen were taken to a different hospital than the one that had A&E on duty, as they deemed they would be able to receive more specialist help there. Using their private contacts they pulled in surgeons that were off on that day so they could operate on the victims of shootout.

- the press reports about other people who rushed to provide first aid to other victims, including a group of Irish Civil Defence officers that happened to be there on holidays, as well as a Norwegian couple – nurse and a firemen and another Polish nurse, who was initially thought to be amongst the victims as she was so engaged in saving people’s lives that she ignored phone calls from her panicked family.

- witnesses also praise the staff from a ZARA clothing shop that in face of a shooting right at their door steps immediately begun evacuating everyone present to the upper floors of the shop. There are also reports about a tattoo artist that was waving people running away into her salon to provide them shelter.

- last but not least Kraków municipal guard (~městská policie) is  receiving praise for their participation, as they not only were the first at the scene but also joined the vehicular chase of the shooter’s car – which led to misinformation, as the guards can be seen in the footage from a shootout hiding behind their car while the cops from the first car tackle the attacker. They received a barrage of slurrs online and were called cowards, but we have to remember that the municipal guard in Poland is tasked with minor duties such as parking offences or anti-social behaviour and are nor equipped, nor trained to this kind of task.

- The police published a detailed time frame of the events that shows how swift emergency service’s response was. According to this, first units were dispatched to the event 23 seconds after first report. The municipal guard patrol cars arrived at the scene in about 2 minutes and a minute later one of them joined a police car in engaging the suspect. The whole action took under 6 minutes, and within those 6 minutes first ambulances and fire brigades arrived at Kraków main square, joined by an air-ambulance helicopter. According to doctors, who were saving police officer’s lives, this actually led to delay in their transport to hospital as at this point the nearest ambulances were already dealing with other victims and they had to wait for the more distant ambulances to arrive.

- Ministry of digital infrastructure reports a massive scale of misinformation. Over 2000 social media accounts have been reported to spread misinformation, including AI generated pictures of government ministers shaking hands with the shooter. Five people were detained in relation to spreading misinformation that could led to endangering the public.

- The media ombudsman is investigating PiS-aligned propaganda channel TV Republika for spreading misinformation – they were reporting, amongst other things, that the shooter is foreign, that the attack targetted pro-PiS protesters and their editor-in chief was lying live on air claiming there is no police to be seen while virtually standing next to a cop – this footage was propagated further by foreign media, including, unfortunately, also Britske Listy: https://blisty.cz/art/137292-nejnovejsi-informace-o-strelbe-v-krakove-podle-policie-sest-mrtvych-a-vice-nez-tucet-zranenych.html. It’s worth to mention that TV Republika is already investigated by the prosecution for spreading false information and harrassing police officers in relation to recent protests under Constitutional Tribunal.

- the commentators point out that gun violence in Poland is so rare, that people inititially failed to react, thinking those are just fireworks or something similar. On the other hand, drivers ignoring no entry signs and driving on pavements and pedestrian zones are so widespread in Poland that nobody was surprised to see a car driving into Kraków’s main square.