Teen Gunman Dead After Killing 15 at German School

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11 Mar 2009, 10:21 am

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090311/ap_ ... ool_attack

WINNENDEN, Germany – A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire at his former high school in southwestern Germany on Wednesday then fled in a hijacked car, killing at least 15 people before police shot him to death, state officials said.

The gunman entered the school in Winnenden and opened fire, shooting at random, police said. He killed nine students, three teachers and a passer-by outside the building, officials said.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said regional police chief Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Triggering a land and air manhunt, he hijacked a car, freed the passengers and drove about 25 miles (40 kilometers) before police found him. When confronted, he killed two bystanders in a shootout with police before he was slain, Baden Wuerttemburg governor Guenther Oettinger said. Two officers were seriously injured, but there was no immediate information on other casualties.

Four hours after the shootings began, police announced the teenager's death.

It was the nation's worst shooting since another teenage gunman killed 16 people and himself in another high school in 2002.

Concerned parents quickly swarmed the school, which was evacuated.

Police have have identified the gunman only as Tim K, who graduated last year from the school of about 1,000 students.

The German government was "deeply shocked and incensed about the appalling killing spree," Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin.

In 2002, 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer before turning his gun on himself in the Gutenberg high school in Erfurt, in eastern Germany.

Steinhaeuser, who had been expelled for forging a doctor's note, was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.

phil777
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11 Mar 2009, 10:39 am

Yet a 17 year old guy still got a hold of a gun in spite of the changes to the age of owning a firearm.... ^.-

demeus
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11 Mar 2009, 11:15 am

No matter what gun control laws are in place, if someone is intent on getting a gun to commit a crime, they will find a way to get the gun.

collectoritis
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11 Mar 2009, 8:05 pm

You reap what you sow :!:

Macbeth
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11 Mar 2009, 9:01 pm

As always (and judging from the reports so far) the media is getting far too hung up on what tools were used to commit the atrocity, as opposed to investigating exactly why the atrocity was committed. Maybe if people spent less time whittling about guns, and more time studying what drives a teenager to stalk the corridors of a learning establishment slaughtering his fellow students.. then they might have more chance of predicting or even halting such events.

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phil777
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11 Mar 2009, 9:06 pm

I actually think it's a matter of both <.< If he hadn't done it, someone else might have done it. =/ If he didn't had the guns, he would have taken something as lethal. On another note, i agree with what you said, but you have to admit, how could you tell that he was planning on doing such a thing? Even if he was being followed by a psychologist or whatnot, lying is very easy for most of the people. Guns are probably the aspect of the accident people THINK they could've prevented in the least.

Igor
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12 Mar 2009, 5:55 am

Having seen this on the BBC's website, I suspect I can see what's coming next:

The BBC wrote:

Some former schoolmates have described him as a shy loner who never had a girlfriend, struggled to fit in and spent all day on his computer.

Macbeth
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12 Mar 2009, 7:29 am

phil777 wrote:

Not long after the Dunblane massacre in the UK, after which ALL handguns were banned, irrespective of use (so our Olympic shooting team has to practice in another country for example.) a man entered an exam hall and attacked the pupils within.. using a home made flamethrower....

In other words.. the weapons are irrelevant. I could cause as many casualties stalking the halls with a decent knife.. if not more because gunfire is a panic starter.

There are other more important aspects: Security, the protection of the vulnerable, and the early detection of such mental issues.

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phil777
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12 Mar 2009, 10:58 am

"If he didn't had the guns, he would have taken something as lethal." ~.~ exactly my point.

kornchild
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14 Mar 2009, 1:16 pm

It is unusual that the majority of the people he killed were girls.

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gina-ghettoprincess
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14 Mar 2009, 1:27 pm

Igor wrote:

Having seen this on the BBC's website, I suspect I can see what's coming next:

The BBC wrote:

Some former schoolmates have described him as a shy loner who never had a girlfriend, struggled to fit in and spent all day on his computer.

Indeed. I recently found the FBI's list of risk factors for students likely to become school shooters:

FBI information, from Michael Moore's 2001 bestseller Stupid White Men wrote:

- poor coping skills
- access to weapons
- depression
- drug and alcohol abuse
- alienation
- narcissism
- inappropriate humour
- unlimited, unmonitored TV and internet use

Access to weapons may be irrelevant, but the rest, from an NT's point of view, are just like us.

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theQuail
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14 Mar 2009, 2:48 pm

Article wrote:

WINNENDEN, Germany – A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black

Lol. Yeah, really important information there. It has been taught to me, implicitly, that the less visible light ones clothing reflects, the more likely one is to be a school shooter.

gina-ghettoprincess
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14 Mar 2009, 3:02 pm

theQuail wrote:

Article wrote:

WINNENDEN, Germany – A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black

Lol. Yeah, really important information there. It has been taught to me, implicitly, that the less visible light ones clothing reflects, the more likely one is to be a school shooter.

Yet more from the same book here:

Also from Stupid White Men by Michael Moore wrote:

I visited a school recently, and some students asked me if I noticed that they and the other students in the school were all wearing white or some neutral colour. Nobody dares wear black, or anything else wild and distinct. That's a sure ticket to the principal's office - where the school pyschologist will be waiting to ascertain whether that Limp Bizkit shirt you have on means that you intend to shoot up Miss Nelson's fourth hour geometry class.

There's quite a lot more on this subject in the book, that's just a bit that seems very relevant here.

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agmoie
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15 Mar 2009, 2:00 pm

The UK has the world`s strictest gun laws because in the aftermath of World War one the establishment was worried that there would be a popular uprising like the one in Russia.The establishment of soviets amongst the army stationed in France/Belgium in 1918/19 was very alarming to them.They took out the million plus rifles that the returning troops came back with and dumped them in the Atlantic.They also brought in the anti-gun legislation to disarm the civilian population.
With the millions who died in the first world war its actually the state that should have been disarmed as they demonstrated that THEY were not suitable to hold weapons.Its the citizenry who should be armed not the government.

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phil777 wrote:

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arnyswart
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15 Mar 2009, 2:56 pm

Quote:

THE teenage gunman who went on a shooting rampage at his old school in Germany last week spent the night before the killings playing a violent video game in which a heavily armed mercenary tracks down and kills an arms dealer, local police revealed at the weekend.

Tim Kretschmer spent from 7.30pm to 9.40pm playing Far Cry2, a game in which the player takes on the role of the killer.

Remarkable parallels emerged between the video game and the 17-year-old's actions, when he killed 15 people and then himself.

In the game it is essential to hijack cars to move around. Kretschmer did the same, holding a pistol to the terrified driver's head and asking: "Should I have fun and pick off some more drivers?" Characters in the game, which is made by the French company Ubisoft and has sold 2.9million copies worldwide, wear black camouflage uniforms, the clothing Kretschmer wore on Wednesday.

Most sinister of all, Far Cry2's killer uses a Beretta 92 handgun - the same weapon fired 112 times by Kretschmer.

The game includes sequences in which the aiming, firing and reloading of a Beretta are portrayed in vivid detail. It rewards players who shoot their victims in the head, the style of killing chosen by Kretschmer.

He also played Counter-Strike, another game featuring gunplay, and TacticalOps, a special forces action game.

Some US experts are convinced of a link between school shootings and violent games.

A West Point psychology professor, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, said: "You can see the games' influence in the way these school shooters aim and shoot accurately and move from one target to the next, moving through people dispassionately."

But Walter Hollstein, a sociologist, working with the Council of Europe, disagrees. "It's nonsense to assume the games turn adolescents into school shooters," he said. "A variety of factors, such as helplessness, anger and loss of control, must come together for them to become the trigger, but the games don't make anyone a killer."

German police investigating the shooting at Winnenden school believe one motive might have been a rebuff from a teenage girl who attended a New Year's Eve party at Kretschmer's home. The girl was one of his first victims, reports said yesterday.

According to reports, Kretschmer had a "casual friendship" with the girl, who lived nearby. But she rejected his advances at the party and later ended their relationship.

The name of the girl has not been released, but it emerged that three of his female victims, Chantal Schill and Jana Schober, both 16, and Stefanie Kleisch, 14, all lived nearby.

Chantal was the first to die, in her seat near the door of classroom 305 at Kretschmer's old school. Police said the shooting resembled an execution.

Kretschmer then shot Jana and Kristina Strobel, 16, and left the classroom, going on to kill Stefanie and four other girls, a boy and three teachers. Three other people were killed later.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday called for tighter gun control in her country after the rampage.

Now they are saying video games could have caused this. At least they could have trained him how......

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15 Mar 2009, 3:38 pm

Is it weird that I somehow feel more sympathy for the perpetrator than the victims?

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Teen Gunman Dead After Killing 15 at German School