German authorities said the teenager was a withdrawn loner who had been plotting the attack for up to a year.
Advertisement
“We found a manifesto of his, in which he considers such attacks”, said Robert Heimberger, chief of the Bavarian State Criminal Police. The teenage gunman, David Ali Sonboly, was “obsessed” with mass killers like Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), German police said July 23.
At least 12 other people were injured in the explosion, which went off close to a bar in the city centre at around 10:00 pm (2000 GMT).
He received inpatient psychiatric treatment in 2015 for two months.
But Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, spokesperson for the Munich prosecutors’ office, said initial evidence had not indicated any kind of political motivation for Sonboly’s attack.
Detectives said the teen, who had a passion for shoot first-person shooter video games, had researched previous mass murders.
Heimberger said that Sonboly’s parents were still in shock from what happened and have not been able to be interviewed.
The youth was under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, who later shot himself, and may have played a role in a Facebook posting that invited people to the scene of the shooting, a police statement said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the tragedy had plunged Germany into “deep and profound mourning” that left a “night of horror” lying behind the people of Munich.
TVC NEWS A deadly shooting in Munich was a “disgusting terrorist attack” aimed at stirring up fear in Germany after France was targeted last week, French President Francois Hollande said over the weekend.
The shooting shook Europe after a spate of recent terror attacks on the continent, including the stabbing of passengers on a German train by a man who claimed to be inspired by ISIS and the killing of 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France.
Officials said Saturday that Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness. They had expected 17-year-old Hussein Daitzik and his family, migrants living in Germany, to visit next week as part of their annual vacation in their ancestral home.
Advertisement
Most of the victims in Friday’s attack were foreigners, including three Turkish nationals, three people from Kosovo and a Greek man.
