Munich gunman planned attacks for one year: Bavarian official

The 18- year- old German- Iranian gunman who killed nine people in Munich on Friday began planning the attack one year ago after visiting the site of a 2009 school shooting in southwest Germany that killed 15 people, a Bavarian state official said on Sunday.

Robert Heimberger, president of the Bavarian state crime office, said material founded at his home showed the gunman was an avid player of violent video crimes who purchased his weapon – a reactivated Glock 17 pistol – on the so- called dark net, an area of the Internet accessible only via special software.

Heimberger said the parents of the gunman remained in shock and were not able to be interviewed. An official of the state prosecutor’s office said the shooting victims did not include any classmates of the gunman.

The teenager was “obsessed” with mass killers like Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group, police said Saturday.

Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after gunman David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping center on Friday in what appears to have been a premeditated attack, before turning the gun on himself.

Officials said Sonboly, a German- Iranian student, had a history of mental illness.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that the teenager had likely hacked a girl’s Facebook account and used it to lure victims to the McDon- ald’s outlet where he began his rampage.

“There is absolutely no link to the Islamic State,” Munich Police Chief Hubertus Andrae said, with prosecutors describing the assault as a “classic act by a deranged person.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Munich had suffered a “night of horror.”