The 18-year-old gunman who opened fire at a crowded Munich shopping mall, killing nine people and wounding more than two dozen before killing himself, had no known ties to any terrorist group, German authorities said Saturday.
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The shooter regularly played a video game “Ego-Shooter”, which features mass killings, according to a police statement.
The shooter, identified by local media as German-Iranian Ali David Sonboly, 18, had visited the site of a 2009 school shooting in the town of Winnenden previous year and took pictures, then he started planning Friday’s shooting spree, Heimberger, said, according to the Associated Press.
Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly spent two months in a closed psychiatric ward in 2015 and received treatment for “social phobias” and anxiety. On Friday, Norway marks the fifth anniversary of Breivik’s rampage in 2011 that killed 77 people.
The shooter used a fake Facebook account to lure people to the McDonald’s by offering free food, police said Sunday.
“The suspect had fears of contact with others” and also depression, he said.
Numerous nine victims of Friday’s shooting were teenagers.
Sonboly, 18, had been planning his attack for a year, police said earlier. He said it was “a game played by almost every known rampage killer”. Three of the victims were 14, two were 15, one was 17 and another 19.
The crime office told a news conference that the victims of the attack had not been specifically targeted and were not classmates of the gunman. One woman called Loretta, who did not want her surname to be used, said she and her eight-year-old son were there when the attack began. His family are understood to be in shock and police have been so far unable to interview them.
♦ Following a search of the attacker’s room, where a book on teenage shooting sprees was discovered, Munich police chief all but ruled out an Islamist militant link in the attack, in which a further 27 people were wounded – including some hurt when panic spread. The attack on the German train injured five people.
On the day of the attack, according to German newspaper Bild, Sonboly said via a computer game message: “Come to the McDonald’s and I will come and get you and shoot you”.
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Heimberger said it appears “very likely” that the suspect purchased the weapon online through the so-called “darknet”. “I’m German, I was born here”, the black-clad assailant replies after the man swore at him, using curse words for foreigners.
