Sick plotter
Teen planned Munich slays for year, saw shrink
THE LONE WOLF lunatic who shot and killed nine people in Munich was a mentally unstable introvert who spent more than a year planning his attack, German officials said Sunday.
Ali David Sonboly, the 18-year-old German-Iranian shooter, visited the site of a school shooting in the German town of Winnenden and took photographs last year.
He then began planning Friday’s attack at a McDonald’s restaurant and shopping mall, which also left about three dozen people wounded, said Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger.
“He had been planning this crime since last summer,” Heimberger said, citing a “manifesto” found in a locked room in the apartment Sonboly shared with his parents and brother.
Around the same time, Sonboly received both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric treatment to help him address his “fears of contact with others,” said Thomas Steinkraus-Koch of prosecutors’ office.
As recently as last month, Sonboly was seeing a doctor for depression and other problems, officials said.
He also was a “devoted player” of online first-person shooter games, which Heimberger called “killer games.”
Officials have not uncovered any evidence that the gunman knew his victims or had ties to terrorist networks. They have found Sonboly was obsessed with mass shootings, including the 2011 massacre in Norway by a rightwing Munich’s terrorist that killed 77 people. Sonboly launched his attack on the fifth anniversary of Anders Breivik’s bloodbath.
Investigators were still tracing exactly how Sonboly got the Glock 17 he used in the mass shooting. Guns are strictly controlled in Germany, and authorities believe he obtained the firearm through a “dark net” market online. The pistol had been rendered unusable and sold as a prop, and then was restored to full function.
Its serial numbers were filed off and Sonboly had no permit to purchase weapons, authorities have said.
“How can it be that an unstable, or possibly even mentally ill, 18-year-old comes into possession of a firearm?” Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel asked Sunday, adding stricter gun control is needed.
The teenager’s brother and parents had still not been interrogated by police because they were too distraught.
The McDonald’s where Sonboly killed most of his victims before storming the shopping mall was a popular hangout for young people with immigrant ties.
Authorities said many of those who died were of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek and Kosovo-Albanian background.
Sonboly shouted anti-foreigner slogans in the midst of the attack — even though his parents came to Germany seeking asylum decades ago.
Kosovo held a day of mourning Sunday for three young ethnic Albanians, two women and a man, who were among those killed.