Munich gunman on rampage

POLICE OFFICER CRITICAL, TWO BYSTANDERS HURT IN SHOOTING

AGerman police officer was critically wounded and two passers-by hurt when a lone gunman fired shots at a commuter rail station near the southern German city of Munich yesterday before being injured himself and detained, police said.

A Munich police spokesperson, Marcus da Gloria Martins, told reporters there was no indication of a “political or religious” motive behind the incident during the morning rush hour.

“The sole male perpetrator was motivated by personal reasons,” he said.

Police identified the gunman as a 37-year-old German national but said no information was available on whether he had a criminal record.

Martins said the man had tried to push at least one police officer in front of an incoming train at an S-Bahn station in Unterfoehring, a suburb of the Bavarian city.

A scuffle ensued during which the assailant took an officer’s gun and fired. “The police officer was shot in the head and critically injured,” Martins said.

Two other people at the station were seriously wounded but their lives were not believed to be in danger. They were being treated in local hospitals.

“The assailant was arrested. He was also injured. There are no indications of further perpetrators,” according to another police tweet.

“The area around the suburban train station Unterfoehring has been cordoned off.”

Last July, an 18-year-old, David Ali Sonboly, shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall before turning the gun on himself, having spent a year planning the rampage.

In March, an axe-wielding attacker wounded nine people in a bloody rampage at a railway station in the western city of Duesseldorf.

The 36-year-old Kosovan national had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. – AFP