Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed in the Filippa K boutique in Stockholm's upmarket department store NK.
Anna Lekander, a Stockholm-based PR project manager, was in the boutique just minutes before it happened.
"There were no more than five to 10 people in the boutique at the time," she told BBC News Online.
Soon after leaving the shop, Ms Lekander heard people shouting from inside, "Catch him, catch him".
"It happened very quickly, I could see people running and I went back into the shop," Ms Lekander said.
"I could see a person lying on the floor, but I didn't know it was her.
There was only a handful of shoppers in the boutique at the time
"There was blood everywhere."
The boutique was one floor above ground level, Ms Lekander said.
To escape, the man who stabbed Ms Lindh would have had to make his way down the escalators and out onto the streets of Stockholm.
Ms Lekander and others in the crowd were then asked by security to move away from the scene.
Soon after she saw Ms Lindh being carried away on a stretcher.
"It looked like she was in shock," she said.
"She had her eyes shut and I think she had a bandage on her right arm."
While in the boutique, Ms Lekander had not noticed that Ms Lindh was there as well.
But she soon learned from others who were present that Ms Lindh had entered the shop together with a friend, seemingly with "no bodyguards or anything", Ms Lekander said.
"It is a Swedish tradition to be as normal, as civilian as possible," Ms Lekander said.
She said she hoped the Swedish people will stick to such ways of life.
But she also expects there to be changes to the way politicians behave in private.
"I think they will tighten security," she said.