A 16-year-old friend of the gunman who shot dead nine people on a murderous rampage in Munich has been arrested by police.
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The 18-year-old lone gunman began shooting at a McDonald’s restaurant at the Olympia shopping centre near Munich’s Olympic stadium, triggering a lockdown in the Bavarian state capital.
A heart made of candles is placed between flowers laid in front of the Olympia shopping mall, where nine people were killed after a shooting rampage, in Munich, Germany July 23, 2016.
The count of those wounded had risen to 35, including several who were injured elsewhere in the city in the panic that followed the shootings at the mall, officials said. He also appeared to have been a victim of bullying by other pupils at his school, filing a complaint against three of his tormentors in 2012.
Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said the gunman, an 18-year-old German-Iranian identified only as David S but named in media reports as Ali Sonboly, visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden and took photographs last year.
German prosecutors said the shooter acquired the semi-automatic pistol he used in the killings on the dark web, which can only be accessed via special software.
Investigators have found documents in the Munich attacker’s home that confirm that he suffered from mental illness, including depression and anxiety, Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sunday. They included a Turk, two Turkish-German dual nationals, a Hungarian, a Kosovan and a Greek, police said.
Three 14-year-olds and two 15-year-olds are among those who were killed.
The attacker, who took his own life, was born and brought up in the Munich area and had spent time in psychiatric care, Reuters said.
A search of his belongings revealed he was also an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including “Counter-Strike”, officials said Sunday. The investigations also indicate the shooter acted alone, he said.
He 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.
He apparently lured victims to the McDonald’s where he opened fire after hacking into a girl’s Facebook page and promising people free food if they showed up.
The blast is the third incident to hit the southern German state of Bavaria in a week, after nine were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several were wounded in an axe attack on a train.
Police did not give any further details about the 16-year-old or how extensive his knowledge was of Sonboly’s plot.
“It is not the case that he deliberately selected the people who he shot”, he said.
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He can be heard shouting: “Because of you I was bullied for seven years…and now I have to buy a gun to shoot you”.
