The shots at the party and the panic. There was a shooting on the night between 29 and 30 August at the Aarau racecourse in Switzerland, while a rave was in progress. The police confirm “several shots fired by a group of people”. The first toll is one dead and five injured, some seriously. The victim is a 22 year old. The injured are four men and a woman aged between 24 and 27.
The police have launched an appeal to stay away from the area and the swimming pool near the plant will also remain closed. “The possible motives and the exact circumstances of the act have yet to be clarified,” the authorities added.
++Nach vorläufigen Erkenntnissen haben die nächtlichen Schüsse im Aarauer Schachen ein Todesopfer und fünf, zum Teil schwer verletzte Personen gefordert.
— Kapo_Aargau (@Kapo_Aargau) August 30, 2026
“A woman bleeding to death”
The shooting occurred at the Aarau racecourse (Canton of Aargau), where around 3,500 people were taking part in the Aarauer rave. This is the story of a witness on the Blick website: “At 2.30 the music suddenly stopped and, after a minute or two, I heard shots. I thought they were fireworks and didn’t give them any thought.” A man, accompanied by a woman, told him to hide behind a refrigerator. “I asked myself why: I still thought it was just fireworks,” he explained. When he then crossed the courtyard, he heard a bullet ricochet off the roof. “I ran towards the woman. She had been hit. We tried to resuscitate her, but she bled to death before our eyes.”
The witness reported that other participants saw a figure armed with an assault rifle near the parked cars, who then fled towards the woods. However, the man did not directly witness the scene.
Another woman said a friend at the rave contacted her around 4 a.m. to tell her about the shooting. Again, participants initially mistook the shots for fireworks, after seeing some sparks on the ceiling. Then someone shouted: “Everyone down!”.
Aargau is one of the northernmost cantons of Switzerland, with Aarau as its capital. It has around 660 thousand inhabitants. It borders Germany to the north.