Eight schoolchildren and two adults were killed on Wednesday in a school shooting in southern Germany, editor of the local paper told television channel N-TV.
German media report that the gunman was a 17-year-old former student. Dressed in black combat gear, he entered the Albertville-Realschule in Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart, at around 08.30 UTC and began firing.
Just hours after a mass shooting in Alabama, German police are searching for a 17-year-old former student of a secondary school in the town of Winnenden, outside Stuttgart, Germany, who is believed to have gone on a shooting spree at the school, killing at least 10 people, 9 of them students.
Carter Dougherty and Victor Homola reporting for The New York Times from Germany explain:
The shooter fled into the center of town after the attack, which occurred around 9:30 a.m. The police issued a public warning to motorists not to pick up hitch-hikers and said the town center at Winnenden, a town of 27,000, had been sealed off.
News reports said other schools in the area were evacuated as helicopters circled above.
Winnenden is located in southwestern Germany:
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 7:54 a.m. German media outlets including Spiegel and N-TV report that the shooter is apparently dead.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:14 a.m. The Associated Press reports that 11 people have died. A police news conference is expected to begin soon.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:20 a.m. German speakers can see video from the the Albertville school in Winnenden on the German broadcaster ZDF’s Web site.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:23 a.m. The BBC has an English-language report with video showing heavily-armed German police at the Albertville school. The BBC also has a slide show of police outside the school after the shootings.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:35 a.m. CNN, citing The Associated Press, now reports that 16 people have died. German news media report that the gunman died in a supermarket in a nearby town after being caught by police. A news conference is expected soon.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:50 a.m. Germany’s N-TV reports that the gunman has been identified as “17-year-old Tim K.” Police sources confirm that the death toll is now at 16 people, including the gunman. Police say that nine students and three teachers were killed at the technical school in Winnenden, where Tim K. had previously been a student. During his escape from the school, the gunman killed one person near the school and two passers-by. Two policemen were seriously injured.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:52 a.m. Spiegel’s Web site has a slide show of images showing the Albertville-Realschule in Winnenden in the wake of the attack.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:55 a.m. The English-language Web site of the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports that the gunman was killed during a shoot-out with police:
Stuttgart police said the 17-year-old black-clad gunman was killed 40 kilometers away from his former school where he opened fire in a classroom.
The gunman is reported to have fled in a car to the neighboring town of Wendlingen. Police said the gunman was killed in a shootout with the police near a supermarket. Authorities say the total death toll has risen to 16.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 8:57 a.m. German chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to speak soon.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:04 a.m. According to Spiegel, the German newspaper Bild has reported that the teenage gunman’s parents were in the possession of 18 weapons and that his father is a “wealthy entrepreneur.” Spiegel Online says that “Special units of the police stormed the house of Tim K’s parents, his mother was interrogated by the police.”
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:15 a.m. The Twitter feed of the German newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten reports that the shooting began at 9:30 a.m. local time at the technical school in Winnenden. Spiegel reports that the gunman had entered two classrooms and started firing.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:23 a.m. The Web site of German broadcaster ZDF explains that the name of the school, the Albertville-Realschule, is related to the fact that the town of Winnenden in Baden-Württemberg is twinned with the French city of Albertville, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1992. ZDF adds that there are are 580 students registered at the secondary school and 32 teachers. ZDF also reports that the person killed outside the school as the gunman made his escape was the school’s gardener.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:37 a.m. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Helmut Rau, the minister of culture for the state of Baden-Württemberg, where the town of Winnenden is located, said that the former student who carried out the attack “was never conspicuous,” and had graduated from the school in 2008.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:42 a.m. German media reports say that there is a primary school right beside the secondary school where the shootings took place today. Spiegel’s English-language Web site reports that in the aftermath of the shootings:
More than 1,000 pupils were led to safety. German news channel N-TV reported that there was chaos around the school complex as parents were gathering there. “You can see the shock and horror in people’s eyes,” one eyewitness said.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 9:55 a.m. An article from the archives might give some perspective on today’s shootings. In 2000, a team of reporters and researchers at The New York Times looked in detail at the phenomenon of mass killings for an article published on April 9, 2000 under the headline: “They Threaten, Seethe and Unhinge, Then Kill in Quantity.” The article was written by Ford Fessenden and sketched a profile of:
102 killers in 100 rampage attacks examined by The New York Times in a computer-assisted study looking back more than 50 years and including the shootings in 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and one by a World War II veteran on a residential street in Camden, N.J., in 1949. Four hundred twenty-five people were killed and 510 people were injured in the attacks.
Mr. Fessenden also wrote that:
Though the attacks are rare when compared with other American murders, they have provoked an intense national discussion about crime, education and American culture.
But in recent years, as this timeline of recent school shootings compiled by the BBC today shows, there have been attacks of this kind in several countries outside the United States, including: Finland, Canada, Argentina, Scotland and Germany.
STUTTGART GERMANY SCHOOL SHOOTING UPDATE 10:32 a.m. The German newspaper Bild and CNN both report that German police have released the name of the 17-year-old who carried out the shooting attacks. He was Tim Kretschmer.
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