A 17-year-old gunman went on a shooting spree at his former school in southwest Germany yesterday, killing up to 15 people before dying himself in a shootout with police, authorities said.
The former student, dressed in black combat gear, entered the school in Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart, at around 9:30am and began firing.
He killed nine students and three teachers at the school, as well as one person at a nearby clinic, before fleeing with a hostage in a car. He was killed in a shootout with police.
PHOTO: AP
Two additional passers-by were killed and two policemen seriously injured in the shootout, bringing the total death toll to 16 including the gunman.
It was not clear whether the gunman had been shot by police or taken his own life, Rainer Koeller, a police spokesman in nearby Waiblingen said.
“I’ve been president of police in Baden-Wuerttemberg for 19 years now and I can’t remember a deed as terrible as this,” said Erwin Hetger, police chief in the southwestern state.
PHOTO: EPA
A German government spokesman in Berlin said he was “deeply shocked” by the incident. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to make a statement later yesterday.
The secondary school is for students aged between 10 and 16. It was evacuated and rescue workers and firefighters were at the scene. Helicopters circled above the historic market town, which had been largely sealed off.
Television pictures showed dozens of heavily armed black-clad SWAT teams entering the two-story white school building.
“Police are coming through the whole time. They’re obviously looking all over town for him,” said Roberto Seifert, who works at a company neighboring the school. “We’ve never had anything like this.”
German media reports said the suspect had used weapons his parents legally held at their home, although police could not confirm this.
A market town whose origins stretch back to the 12th century, Winnenden is the hometown of German firm Kaercher, a maker of high-pressure cleaners.
In February 2002, a 22-year-old gunman killed the headmaster and seriously injured another person at a vocational training establishment he attended at Freising, near Munich.
Two months later, 16 people were killed at a high-school in Erfurt, eastern Germany, by a former student, who then killed himself.
In November 2006, a former student at a vocational school in Lower Saxony, northwestern Germany, went on a shooting spree, injuring 37 people before turning the gun on himself.
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