On the surface, there was little to indicate that Tim Kretschmer was a mass killer, capable of slaughtering 15 people with his father’s 9mm Beretta pistol he then turned on himself.
Like many other teenagers, the 17-year-old trainee salesman — described as “unremarkable” and “reserved” — enjoyed working out at the gym and was a keen table-tennis player.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, there were some clues: he had been suffering from depression, enjoyed grisly horror movies and violent “shoot-em-up” computer games.
And in addition to his other sporting activities, he would often train at the shooting range of which his father Joerg, a successful local businessman employing over 150 people at a packaging firm, is a member.
But none of this made him stand out as anything unusual, let alone a crazed killer.
Kretschmer “grew up in a happy family and had a sister — five years younger — with whom he had a good relationship,” Heribert Rech, interior minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg state, which includes Winnenden, told reporters.
Kretschmer “did not have many friends but did have a few … and was interested in one particular girl,” Rech said.
Other teenagers described him as “reserved,” “unremarkable” and even “friendly” but he was nonetheless somewhat of a loner, with few friends.
“He was simply not accepted by anyone and just sat all day in front of his computer,” one schoolmate, Mario, told German television station N24.
Police who seized his computer after the massacre said he was particularly keen on shooting games — especially the violent Counter-Strike — and had become a real-life crack shot.
Der Spiegel magazine quoted Michael, one of his table-tennis partners, as saying Kretschmer had “thousands of horror videos at home” and was “rather unique.”
Academically, he was described as “average,” graduating from the Albertville school with mediocre grades.
From April until September 2008 he received psychiatric treatment that was meant to resume — at the very clinic outside which he shot one person during the rampage.
In his own words, he had simply “had enough of this crummy life.”
Seven hours before the carnage, he told a friend on an Internet chat room: “Shit, Bernd. I have had enough … always the same. People are laughing at me, no one recognizes my potential.”
Then he issued his chilling warning: “I have weapons here and tomorrow morning I will go to my old school. You will hear about me tomorrow. Make note of the name of the place: Winnenden.”
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not