Police: Munich gunman ‘obsessed’ with attacks
MUNICH — The gunman who paralyzed Germany’s third-largest city and shot dead nine people before killing himself was described Saturday by police as “obsessed” with mass shootings but lacking any apparent link to Islamist militant groups.
As a portrait emerged of a troubled 18-year-old who had amassed literature about shooting rampages, Munich authorities declared a day of mourning, and Germans struggled to come to terms with the second violent attack in a week targeting innocents.
“We are in deep and profound mourning for those who will never return to their families,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after an urgent meeting with senior security officials. She paid tribute to police who responded to the attack, which left more than two dozen people injured.
Munich, a city of 1.4 million people, came to a virtual standstill for hours following Friday’s early-evening shootings at a McDonald’s restaurant and a shopping mall, with public transportation shut down and people ordered to stay indoors in case there were more attackers on the loose. But the gunman, a German of Iranian descent whose full name has not been publicly disclosed by officials, apparently acted alone, police said.
Police have been referring to the dead suspect as David S., but German media named him as Ali David Sonboly.
Merkel promised a vigorous investigation. Police were looking into how the gunman had procured a Glock 9 mm pistol and 300 rounds of ammunition. They were also investigating evidence of chilling premeditation on the shooter’s part: an apparently hacked Facebook page aimed at luring people with fake offers of free food to the McDonald’s where the attack began.
Europe had already been on edge in the wake of the Bastille Day truck rampage in the French Riviera resort city of Nice, which killed at least 84, carried out by a Tunisian-born deliveryman who police said had apparently undergone a rapid conversion to Islamist extremist ideology.
Germany was further rattled when an Afghan teenager attacked passengers on a commuter train Monday with a knife and an ax, injuring four aboard the train and a woman passerby before being shot dead by police. He left behind a video proclaiming loyalty to the Islamic State, but authorities have not uncovered any sign of involvement by the group.
By midday Saturday, the streets of Munich, the normally bustling capital of the southern German state of Bavaria, was eerily quiet.
The immediate scene of the attacks was still closed off by police, but onlookers drew near to barricades to lay flowers and light candles — makeshift public shrines that have become a familiar sight in the wake of other attacks in recent months on European soil.
Munich’s police chief, Hubertus Andrae, told reporters investigators who searched the attacker’s home overnight found literature about mass killings but no sign of any connection to Islamic extremism. He described the teenager as “obsessed with shooting rampages” and suggested he drew inspiration from the massacre five years ago in Norway of 77 people by a far-right extremist, Anders Behring Breivik. Special correspondent Angela Waters reported from Munich and reporter Laura King from Washington.