Bavarian officials say the gunman, identified by sources as David Sonboly who called himself “Ali” – began planning the attack a year ago after visiting the German city of Winnenden where another teenager killed 15 people in 2009.
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Police said he was questioned over his relationship with the gunman who had been planning the attack for a year, allegedly to get back at those who had bullied him.
There is so far no evidence that he knew any of his victims, or that there was any political motivation behind the attack, said Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutors’ office.
The gunman had also been under psychiatric care in a hospital for two months in 2015, officials said Sunday.
The shooter’s father saw a video of the start of his son’s rampage on social media and went to police as it was taking place, Heimberger said, adding that the family was still emotionally not up to questioning by police.
The shooting was carried out on the fifth anniversary of right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s attack on a youth camp in Norway that killed 77 people, and the shooter’s home was found to contain literature about mass killings.
The solo shooting spree saw nine people murdered and 27 others injured – 10 of whom are in a critical condition – before he took his own life.
Heimberger said there were “many more terabytes” of information to evaluate, and that the teenager’s brother and parents were still not emotionally up to being interrogated by police.
An armed police man guards the downtown pedestrian zone near Marienplatz square following the rampage shooting in Munich last week.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Munich had suffered a “night of horror”. A 20-year-old and a 45-year-old were also killed.
The teen who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said.
Officials said Saturday that Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness.
Police will also have to find out how the 18-year-old obtained the firearm in a country whose gun control system is described by the U.S. Library of Congress as being “among the most stringent in Europe”.
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Friday’s attack was the second one in less than a week in Bavaria that targeted victims at random.
