Then on Friday, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man fatally shot nine people in a Munich shopping mall, five on them under the age of 16, and injured 35 others, three of whom are still in critical condition.
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Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said the shooter visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden and took photographs past year, then set about planning Friday’s attack, according to Associated Press.
Further details were not immediately available late Sunday, but Germany’s dpa news agency reported that the 16-year-old boy had gone to police himself after the deadly rampage.
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.
Investigators, who found photos of that visit on Sonboly’s digital camera, believe he began planning his attack after the trip.
The Bavarian State Crime Office said Sonboly, 18, had bought the illegal pistol used in the attack on the internet.
The filed-off serial numbers of the Glock made it hard to establish its origin. As for further gun control, Interior Minister Thomas De Maizière has struck a note of caution.
Nonetheless, German politicians are reacting this week to the shooting in Munich by calling for more gun control.
The proposed changes, which must still be enacted by European Union member states, would also set more stringent rules for deactivating previously fully-functioning guns and making them available for sale.
“Maybe we are a little bit more cautious about what exactly do we do, but we will not let the attackers change our lives”, said Eckart Quarze, who attended the church service with his family. The weapons had been deactivated for use in stage productions but had subsequently been retooled.
The 27-year-old had meant to target a nearby music festival in the city of Ansbach, news agency DPA quoted regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann saying. Gun owners must prove expert knowledge in handling the weapon, usually gained through a months-long course, and all guns must be registered in an electronic database.
“Each of these cases is one too many”, said de Maiziere, adding, “I understand, that many people are unsettled and anxious”.
Firearms in Germany are very tightly regulated, requiring licensing and registration, strict background checks and limits on where and when gun owners can shoot.
The two of them managed to make it out one of the mall’s exits, and when they arrived at their nearby apartment, they invited two young girls huddling in the hallway to shelter with them, he said.
The shooter was identified by classmates as Ali Sonboly. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for that attack.
Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly spent two months in a closed psychiatric ward in 2015 and received treatment for “social phobias” and anxiety.
The police also said that the young Afghan may have posted on Facebook after the killings a similar message to the one the killer posted in an attempt to lure victims.
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The fact that six of nine victims had a non-German heritage – including Turkish, Hungarian, Greek and Kosovar – was a complete coincidence, Steinkraus-Koch said, adding that there was no political motivation behind the crime.
