Munich
killer was bullied teenage loner who had obsession with mass murder
• Ali Sonboly
carried out deadly spree on anniversary of Utøya massacre
• Gunman
apparently used hacked Facebook page to lure victims
• Police attempt
to trace Glock semi-automatic pistol used by attacker
Janek Schmidt in
Munich, Kate Connolly in Berlin, and Emma Graham-Harrison
Saturday 23 July
2016 18.50 BST
The German
18-year-old who killed nine people at a Munich shopping centre on
Friday night was obsessed with mass killings, owned a book on US
school shootings and played computer shooting games.
Most of his victims
were fellow teenagers, five of them under 16. The loss of so many
young people added to the depth of mourning in Germany, where people
are struggling to understand how a shy student managed to acquire a
gun and bullets and then turn them on his peers in cold blood.
The attacker, named
as Ali Sonboly, was the son of Iranian refugees who came to Germany
in the 1990s. Neighbours said he was shy and withdrawn and showed no
signs of the violence that had apparently preoccupied him long before
Friday night. A police search of the gunman’s family home, part of
a social housing block in the prosperous Maxvorstadt district, found
newspaper clippings and books related to mass murders, among them one
called Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters.
“[He] was obsessed
with shooting rampages,” Munich’s police chief, Hubertus Andrae,
said. Sonboly also seems to have been interested in the far-right
terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 mostly young people in a
killing spree across Oslo and an island camp. The Munich attack came
on the fifth anniversary of the Norwegian slaughter. A classmate told
Germany’s Bild newspaper that Sonboly used Breivik’s face as his
profile picture on the WhatsApp messaging service.
Sonboly apparently
tried to lure his victims to the sight of the massacre with a bizarre
message on a hacked Facebook page, promising free meals to anyone at
the restaurant at 4pm. It was a venue the gunman knew, police
believe, and he may have recognised victims, although he did not
begin shooting until two hours after the Facebook invitation.
One of the questions
facing authorities is whether Sonboly, who was bullied and isolated
at school, intentionally set out to kill other young people. The dead
included seven teenagers, a 20-year-old and a 45-year-old woman.
Germany has a grim
track record of attacks on young people, with two teenagers returning
to their schools to launch massacres in the last 15 years, one in
2002 and a second in 2009.
The DPA news agency
said it found evidence that Sonboly had idolised Tim Kretschmer, who
in 2009 killed 15 people in the town of Winnenden, in a neighbouring
state. The 17-year-old had returned to his former school and opened
fire, shot several other people while fleeing police and killed
himself.
In 2002 in the city
of Erfurt a 19-year-old had also entered his former school and killed
11 teachers, two other school employees, two students and a
policeman. At the time security forces were criticised for their slow
response.
Police spokesman
Peter Beck said officials don’t yet know what triggered the attack
in Munich but that there was no clear political motivation. Searches
had revealed no links to terror groups and he suggested the attack
was unlikely to have been driven by Islamist extremism.
Chancellor Angela
Merkel vowed that authorities would determine why the 18-year-old had
carried out the killings. The chancellor said Germany was in deep and
profound mourning for those who would never return to their families:
“We share in your grief – we think of you and are suffering with
you,” she said.
The dead included
three children from Turkey, three ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and at
least one Greek teenager. Tributes to the dead poured in from across
Europe, with flags flying at half-mast across Germany.
Security forces are
trying to trace the Glock semi-automatic pistol used by Sonboly, who
probably bought it through the black market as he did not have a
licence, and initial reports say the gun had its serial number erased
and may once have been deactivated.
The teenager was not
on the radar of security forces as he did not have a criminal record
and had never attracted the attention of intelligence agencies, said
interior minister Thomas de Maizière.
Germans took some
comfort amid the horror from video footage of a man confronting
Sonboly as he paced a carpark roof near the site of the massacre.
Thomas Salbey told Bild that he was having a beer when he heard
shots. “I looked down from my balcony and saw how the man went
through the glass entrance-way. He had reloaded his pistol. I threw
my beer bottle at him. It shattered on the glass roof. But I think he
didn’t hear it anyway,” Salbey said.
When Sonboly
appeared on the carpark roof, Salbey shouted at him: “Arsehole.”
He also said: “Are you crazy!” The gunman answered: “I’m
German,” to which the reply came: “You’re a wanker is what you
are.” The man then fired at Salbey, whose balcony is flecked by
bullet holes. He took cover, but called out to police arriving below
that the gunman was on the roof. “I was not scared. I didn’t know
whether they were real bullets or just rubber bullets,” he said.
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