Munich shooter planned for a year
Enjoyed violent games, fascinated by 2009 school attack
— The teenage gunman who killed nine people in a shooting rampage in Munich had been treated for depression and paranoia and appeared to have begun planning the attack about a year ago, German authorities said Sunday.
The gunman, Ali Sonboly, the 18-year-old son of Iranian immigrant parents, had sought refuge in the Internet, where he immersed himself in a violent video game and encrypted networks, through which authorities suspect that he acquired the pistol used to carry out the attack.
Sonboly appeared to have begun planning the attack after visiting the site of a 2009 school shooting in Winnenden, Germany, in which 15 people were killed, initial evidence gleaned from his computer showed.
“We found a manifesto of his, in which he considers such attacks,” said Robert Heimberger, chief of the Bavarian State Criminal Po- lice. “From photos we found on a digital camera, we know that he visited the site and took pictures there.”
Sonbol was “obsessed with that attack,” Heimberger said.
Although most of the victims in Friday’s shooting at the Olympic mall in a neighbourhood to the west of downtown Munich were also teenagers from the Munich area, police and prosecutors said they had found no links between
them and the gunman. The victims included three 14-yearolds, two 15-year-olds, and individuals ages 17, 19, 20 and 45.
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.
Emergency calls to police had led them to believe there could be as many as three gunmen. With the rampage coming on the heels of the attacks by a Tunisian immigrant that killed 84 people in Nice, France, and by a young Afghan refugee wielding an axe and a knife who wounded five people on a train in Germany, fear spread quickly.
But Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, spokesperson for the Munich prosecutors’ office, said initial evidence had not indicated any kind of political motivation for Sonboly’s attack.
Instead, it appeared that Sonboly used a Facebook account opened in May under a false name, or the name of a real girl who was not involved in the shooting, to invite people to the McDonald’s across from the mall, promising free food. Five of the nine victims were found inside the fast food restaurant, two others on the sidewalk in front, one in front of an electronics market and one inside the shopping mall. None of the victims were schoolmates of the gunman or appeared to have responded to the invitation over social media.
“None of those named in the commentary under the posting were among the victims,” Heimberger said.
Some reports have identified the gunman as David Ali Sonboly, but neighbours who lived in his apartment building said he was known to everyone as Ali. He held both German and Iranian citizenship. His parents remained too distraught to question, Heimberger said.
Heimberger stressed that officials had only begun their investigation, but that evidence collected so far painted a picture of a mentally disturbed teenager obsessed with mass shootings and first-person-shooter video games, including “Counter-Strike: Source.”
Medical records showed that the gunman had received inpatient psychiatric treatment for two months in 2015 and continued to be seen on an outpatient basis, said Steinkraus-Koch. Prescription medication for treatment of depression was found in Sonboly’s home, Steinkraus-Koch said, but it was not clear if he was regularly taking the medication.
After a brief altercation with police, the gunman turned his refurbished Glock 17 pistol on himself, firing a bullet into his head, Steinkraus-Koch said. The pistol was a former theatre weapon that had been restored to be capable of shooting live rounds.
Pressed about the weapon and the gunman’s activities on the Internet, Heimberger said he knew little about what some call the “darknet”, which is accessible only by certain software and is used by criminals and terrorists to communicate without being detected.
The gunman turned his refurbished Glock 17 pistol on himself.