Kraków officers detain gunman after 6 killed in square attack

Polish officers Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański were wounded on Saturday while arresting a 24-year-old gunman in Kraków, where six people died and 17 were injured, a Guardian news report said Sunday.

The rapid response has become central to Polish officials’ account of how a higher toll was avoided; police reached Kraków’s main square 23 seconds after the first emergency call, according to the report.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday on X: “They probably saved many human lives, disregarding the risk to their own.”

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said the officers’ speed and courage “prevented further human casualties.”

The report said footage that appeared Sunday showed two officers trading fire with the gunman. One officer then restrained the suspect on the ground and fired several times before collapsing, apparently wounded.

Kulik, from Bielsko-Biała in southern Poland, was hit by three bullets and had surgery Saturday. Morański was shot in the chest area and also underwent surgery. Polskie Radio 24 reported that both officers were brought out of medically induced comas Sunday.

Kulik is a former paratrooper and a member of the volunteer fire service in Bielsko-Biała. “We’re very proud of him,” a firefighter from the city’s Leszczyny district told local news site Bielsko.biala.pl. “He responds to emergencies just like we do.”

TVP World reported that both officers are under 30. It said Morański is from Powroźnik, a village about 90 miles, or 150 kilometers, southeast of Kraków near Poland’s border with Slovakia, where a mass was held for him Sunday.

The suspect was described in the Guardian report as a Polish national. The report said the attack was believed to have been inspired by far-right ideologies, without presenting that as a final legal finding.

Source: news report, The Guardian, Nov. 8, 2026