German prosecutors launched an investigation on Monday into the father of Tim Kretschmer, the 17-year-old who shot dead 15 people last week, on suspicion of manslaughter, police and prosecutors said.
Kretschmer’s businessman father legally kept more than a dozen weapons at his house, one of which — a 9mm Beretta pistol — was used to deadly effect by his son in and around the town of Winnenden last Wednesday.
Prosecutors said they had launched the investigation because the father had kept the gun in his bedroom — the others were locked up — despite indications that he knew his son to be suffering from depression.
“As a result there is an initial suspicion of manslaughter,” police spokesman Nick Brenner said.
Police spokeswoman Renate Roesch said the 17-year-old had stated in a medical form for military service in December that he had suffered from depression that year.
The interior minister of the state where the killings took place said last week that Kretschmer may have opened the combination lock on the cabinet containing the other guns — and taken out the bullets used in the massacre.
Joerg Kretschmer, who owns a local packaging firm, faces up to five years in prison if convicted of manslaughter.
Last Wednesday, Kretschmer, dressed in black combat gear, began his rampage at his former school in southwestern Germany.
He shot dead eight girls, one boy and three female teachers at the school, killed a passer-by outside a psychiatric clinic where he had been due to receive treatment, hijacked a car and shot two others at a car dealership.
He died in a shootout with police about 30km from the school. Police believe he shot himself.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been