Germany Reels from Deadly School Shooting
Pastor Dale Morgan
Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009
*Germany Reels from Deadly School Shooting*
By Ursula Sautter / Bonn
Time Magazine
The terrible spectacle is all too familiar: Heavily armored police
officers and Special Forces operatives blocking access to an otherwise
deserted school building; crying students, their faces filled with
horror and panic, running to shell-shocked parents; ambulances and
patrol cars waiting as helicopters observe the chaos from above.
Today it was the turn of Winnenden (pop. 27,600), a pretty town some 12
miles (20 km) outside Stuttgart in southern Germany. At 9:30 in the
morning, Tim Kretschmer, a 17-year-old former student of Albertville
Realschule entered the school's plain, white flat-roofed building
wielding a 9mm Beretta and, as a police spokesman described it, "simply
opened fire". On his rampage through classrooms and corridors, the
youngster, clad in black combat gear and reportedly wearing a mask,
killed nine pupils, all of them aged 14 or 15, and three women teachers,
and injured seven others. One of the injured students died later at a
hospital. See pictures of the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
But the gunman didn't stop there. Kretschmer, who graduated from the
school a year ago, fled on foot and headed toward central Winnenden.
Along the way he shot a pedestrian — an employee of a near-by
psychiatric clinic — before hijacking a green Volkswagen Sharan along
with its terrified owner. Threatened at gunpoint, the driver, 41, turned
his vehicle towards Stuttgart. But heavy traffic made the murderer
worried and so they turned back again. After a wild trip down country
roads, the car crashed into a roadside ditch on the Autobahn entry ramp
near the town of Wendlingen am Neckar, some 24 miles (40 km) from
Winnenden. The driver managed to escape to a patrol car nearby, but the
shooter vanished in the opposite direction. After killing a salesman,
36, and his client, 46, at a car sales yard in a local business area,
the gunman was shot in the leg by law-enforcement officers but managed
to vanish between the parked cars in the vicinity. The killing spree,
which took a total of 16 lives, finally ended when Kretschmer, aware
that the police were closing in, shot himself; he was found dead at
around 12:30 p.m.
Not much is known about the killer so far. The son of a businessman from
the neighboring village of Leutenbach (pop. 4,800), he had started an
apprenticeship after graduating with middling success in 2007. According
to Baden-W�rttemberg education minister Helmut Rau, Kretschmer had been
known in his former school as an "entirely unremarkable" student who had
"never attracted attention in any fashion". Obviously, the politician
added, the youngster must have had a "double identity". (Read "How the
NIU Massacre Happened".)
Kretschmer's motive remains unknown. Police have speculated that he may
have heard about yesterday's Alabama massacre, news of which broke in
Germany overnight. A misogynistic motive is also being investigated
since the vast majority of the victims are female.
But the means by which Kretschmer obtained the murder weapon seem clear.
A late-morning search of his parents' house has revealed that his
father, a member of a local gun club, is the legal owner of 15 firearms;
one pistol that had not been locked away, as well as many rounds of
ammunition, were missing, the police say. Germany's gun laws are
relatively strict but registered competitive marksmen, hunters and
collectors can acquire guns after their physical and psychological
soundness has been ascertained. (Cover: "The Columbine Effect".)
Today's massacre is the latest in a series of school shootings in
Germany in the recent past. In 2002, 19-year-old Robert Steinh�user
killed 12 teachers, a school secretary, two students and a policeman in
a shooting spree that began in his one-time high school, Gutenberg
Gymnasium, in Erfurt. In 2006, an 18-year-old burst into his former
school in Emsdetten in Western Germany, shooting and wounding at least
11 children before committing suicide.
Like his predecessors, Kretschmer very likely "suffered from a severe
personality disorder," says Lothar Adler from The Ecumenical Hainich
Clinic in Muhlhausen, Thuringia. Adler is the author of "Amok – A Study"
which was based on his analysis of almost 200 school shootings and other
killing sprees. The psychiatrist, who was part of the post-Erfurt
counseling team, explains that very often killers have pronounced
narcissistic traits, problems in forming normal relationships and are
easily offended. They also tend to have low frustration thresholds and
can harbor grudges for long periods of time. Physiologically, Adler
says, "they frequently also lack serotonin, a neuro-transmitter that
buffers fears and other affects."
While the overall number of such incidents in Germany has actually gone
down very slightly over the past three decades, those that do occur
attract much more public attention, especially school shootings. "These
days the ritualization of the deed is often very pronounced — thus the
mask and combat gear," Adler says. "For the perpetrator, the choice of
weapon, for instance, is very important as a way to define his
dangerousness."
The bodies of the slain are still lying where they fell in the high
school, waiting for the attention of crime scene staff and medical
examiners. German politicians across the country are again voicing their
determination to help prevent similar happenings in future. For the
families of those who died today, that won't be much consolation.