Munich gunman ‘obsessed’ with mass killings

Munich, Germany / AFP

The lone teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was “obsessed” with mass killers such as Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the IS group, police said on Saturday.
Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after the black-clad gunman went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday evening before turning the gun on himself.
“There is absolutely no link to the IS,” Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said. He said the assault was a “classic act by a deranged person” and described an individual “obsessed” with mass shootings.
He said German investigators saw an “obvious link” between Friday’s killings and Breivik’s massacre of 77 people in a bomb attack in Oslo and a shooting rampage on the nearby island of Utoya exactly five years earlier.
Most of the victims in Friday’s attack were foreigners.
Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said the 18-year-old German-Iranian student — named as David Ali Sonboly — had suffered depression, while media reports said he had undergone psychiatric treatment.
The teenager had 300 rounds in a rucksack when he targeted the busy Olympia shopping mall, just minutes away from the flat he shared with his family, according to authorities.

Tributes for victims
Grieving Munich residents laid roses and lit candles in memory of the victims, with one placard bearing the simple plea: “Why?”
“Bloodbath in Munich,” was the headline on the best-selling Bild newspaper as Germany struggled to come to terms with the killings.
Among the nine killed were three Turks, three Kosovans and a Greek national, according to their foreign ministries.
Most of the casualties were young people aged 15 to 21, with three women among the dead according to Munich police. Sixteen people were wounded, three of them critically.
The attack sent Germany’s third largest city into lockdown as police launched a massive operation to track down what had initially been thought to be up to three assailants.
An amateur video posted on social media appeared to show a man in black walking away from a McDonald’s fast foot outlet in Munich while firing repeatedly with a handgun as people fled screaming.
A police patrol shot and wounded him but he managed to escape before police found the body of what they believed was the “only shooter.”