The Afghan youth who was arrested on Sunday was in contact over WhatsApp with the 18-year-old gunman who killed nine people at a Munich shopping mall, authorities said on Friday.
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Steinkraus-Koch said there is still no evidence of any political motivation to the crime, nor that the shooter killed specific victims.
Heimberger said the attacker appeared to have illegally purchased the pistol used – a 9 mm Glock 17 – through the “dark web”, a shadowy part of the Internet that is not discoverable by standard search engines and is used for anonymous, illicit transactions.
Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, opened fire near Munich’s busy Olympia shopping mall on Friday evening, killing nine and wounding 35 more, before turning the gun on himself as police approached.
Investigators are said to have come to the conclusion that the 16-year-old who is from the district of Laim in Munich had advance knowledge of the shooting spree.
Heimberger, head of Bavaria’s criminal police, also said that the victims of the attack had not been specifically targeted and were not classmates of the gunman.
The shooter took his own life following the attack.
The Munich shootings are one of four attacks across Germany since July 18, which have seen ten people killed and 34 injured.
Shortly after 19.00 German police say that “suspects” were “still on the run” and they urged people to avoid public places.
The 16-year-old was under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, named locally as Ali David Sonboly, who later shot himself. The gunman’s body was found in a side street close to the shopping centre at around 9.30 p.m.
Investigators said the teen posted on a fake Facebook page promising meals at the McDonald’s for anyone that showed up at 4 p.m. They said Sonboly carried 300 rounds of ammunition in his backpack when when his body was found by police.
Three were from Kosovo, three from Turkey and one from Greece.
“Such actions endanger people and trigger police measures for which those responsible will be held fully responsible”, the statement said.
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Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a machete in the south-western city of Reutlingen.
