GERMAN TEEN SHOT HIMSELF AFTER KILLING 15

WINNENDEN, Germany — A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire at his former high school in southwestern Germany on Wednesday, killing 13 people there and two elsewhere, before police shot him to death, state officials said.

The teenager killed nine students, three teachers, and a passer-by outside Albertville high school in Winnenden, authorities said. A student wounded in the shooting died in hospital later Tuesday.

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

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

No motive has been identified. The victims were primarily female. Of the students killed, eight were girls and one was a boy.

All three teachers were women. The victims at the auto dealership were men, as was the passer-by who was shot near the school.

In their hunt for the gunman, police searched his parents' home in a nearby town. The suspect's father, who is a member of a local gun club, had 16 firearms, one of which was missing, police said.

Police identified the weapon used in the attack as a high-caliber pistol.

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

“He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath,” said police Chief Erwin Hetger. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

The gunman entered the school in the town 20 kilometres northeast of Stuttgart and opened fire, shooting at random, police said.

Witnesses said students jumped from the windows of the school building. Concerned parents quickly swarmed around the school, which was evacuated.

It was about four hours later that authorities said the gunman had been killed, but it was not immediately clear at what time police shot him.

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.

Below is the video of the German tragedy (March 11, 2009)