Helsinki:
A gunman allegedly shot three people after a drunken argument in the queue at a McDonald's all-night drive-through in Finland killing all three, police said on Tuesday.
Police were called to the burger bar in Porvoo, just north of Helsinki, at around 2:00 am after shots were fired. A man has been arrested after fleeing the scene, they added.
"What we know is that there were three cars in a row waiting to be served at the McDonald's hamburger restaurant," investigator Peter Fagerholm of the local police in Porvoo told AFP.
"They started to argue, and started a little to fight and that led to the shooting... One of the people involved took out a handgun and shot these three people," he said.
Two men in an open convertible were killed on the spot while a third man who was in the same car died of his injuries in hospital Wednesday afternoon.
"There were two people shot in the head and one in the chest at very close range," Fagerholm said.
A pregnant woman and her boyfriend were also in the car but had escaped unharmed. It remained unclear what had set off the row. "It appears it was basically an argument between drunk people. Nothing serious ... Nobody could have expected that one of them would take a handgun out and start shooting these people," he said, adding that the shooter and victims had not known each other.
"It is unbelievable that these people were just going for a hamburger and ... now we have three people dead," he said.
Police later arrested a man, born in 1969, who was suspected of being the shooter. When he was pulled over on the motorway, the man, who was intoxicated and had recently been released on parole from a life sentence for murder, had the murder weapon with him in his Toyota SUV, Fagerholm said.
"It was a semi-automatic handgun, and we know now it was an illegal handgun, he said.
Police also arrested another man and a woman who were in the man's car, but there was no doubt that the shooter was, according to Fagerholm.
"We know for sure who the perpetrator was," he said. Finland has one of the world's highest per capita gun ownership rates.
The government in June rejected a full ban on semi-automatic weapons, rejecting an inquiry commission proposal following shootings at two schools in 2007 and 2008 that left a total of 20 people including the killers dead.