Munich shooter a depressed, bullied teen
BERLIN: The lone teenager who shot dead nine people and injured 27 others in Munich had researched school killing sprees and attempted to lure victims to the scene of his rampage with an offer of free food on social media, officials have said.
Police said the 18-year-old gunman, who opened fire at a crowded shopping centre and McDonald’s restaurant on Friday evening, had been raised in Munich and was still in fulltime education.
They added that he had likely been in psychiatric care and there were indicators he had been treated for depression.
Robert Heimberger, a police investigator, said on Saturday it appeared the gunman had hacked a Facebook account and lured people to the shopping centre with an offer of free food.
The gunman, who has been named locally as Ali Sonboly, is also said to have researched mass-casualty attacks and had an obsession with shooting sprees like the massacre five years ago by Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik.
Classmates of Sonboly told the Guardian he had been bullied at school, while neighbours described him as shy and lazy. “At school Ali was often bullied by others and really unpopular,” one classmate said. “He was a bit chubby, and he was either by himself or together with one or two people, but he seemed to have hardly any friends.
Some 2,300 police from across Germany and neighboring Austria were scrambled in response to the attack, which happened less than a week after a 17-year-old Afghan asylumseeker wounded five people in an ax-and-knife rampage that started on a regional train near the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg.
The suspect’s body was found about 2 1/2 hours after the attack, which started shortly before 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) at a McDonald’s restaurant across the street from the mall. He was found with 9mm Glock pistol and at least 300 rounds of ammunition, police said.
MUNICH: The teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was “obsessed” with mass killers like Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group, police said on Saturday.
Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after 18-year-old David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday evening 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 the teenager had likely hacked a girl’s Facebook account and used it to lure victims to the McDonald’s outlet where he began his rampage. “I will give you whatever you want, for not a lot of money,” the online invite read, according to German media reports.
“There is absolutely no link to the Islamic State,” Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said, describing the assault as a “classic act by a deranged person”.
Investigators see an “obvious link” between Friday’s killings and Breivik’s massacre of 77 people in Norway exactly five years earlier, Andrae added.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first reaction to the carnage, said Munich had suffered a “night of horror”.
Most of the victims in Friday’s attack were young people, with three aged just 14, police said. Prosecutor Thomas SteinkrausKoch said Sonboly had suffered depression, while media reports said he had undergone psychiat- ric treatment.
The teenager had 300 rounds of ammunition in a rucksack when he targeted the busy Olympia shopping mall, just minutes away from the flat he shared with his family, according to authorities.
Neighbours said Sonboly was born to Iranian parents, a taxi driver father and a mother who worked at a department store.
They lived in the well-heeled Maxvorstadt neighbourhood in a tidy social housing block popular with immigrant families.
Neighbour Delfye Dalbi, 40, described him as a helpful young man who was “never bitter or angry”, though others remembered a quiet loner.
“All his body language said ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’” said Stephan, a waiter at the cafe on the ground floor of the housing block.
A police source cited by DPA news agency said Sonboly loved playing violent video games and was an admirer of the 17-year-old German who shot dead 15 people at his school near Stuttgart in 2009.