Stuttgart, Jan. 25 (BNA) A gunman killed a woman and wounded three others in a shooting attack inside a lecture hall at Germany’s oldest university in Heidelberg on Monday, police said.
The 23-year-old woman died of her injuries a few hours after the crime, and according to the police, the 18-year-old suspected perpetrator committed suicide.
Investigators initially gave no information about a possible motive for the attack. Andreas Hergen, head of the Heidelberg Public Prosecutor’s Office, said it was still too early for that.
According to previous information from security sources, the man had no political or religious motives. It is assumed that he suffers from psychological problems or is related to one of the victims.
The 18-year-old German citizen broke into the hall with about 30 people and shot them with a shotgun.
The head of the Mannheim Police Department, Siegfried Kollmar, said at a press conference that the suspected perpetrator had two long-barreled firearms. What happened, he said, was “unsurpassable in terms of tragedy”.
The suspect, a university student, may have announced the crime earlier. And the German news agency (dpa) quoted Colmar as saying that immediately before the attack, he sent a message via WhatsApp saying, “People must be punished now.”
In the letter, he also said that he wished to be buried at sea. “We will have to verify that,” Colmar stressed. “We will now check his surroundings in the next few days.”
Colmar assumes that the man who was living in Mannheim obtained the weapons abroad. Neither he nor his relatives were allowed to possess weapons. Hergen said the 18-year-old had no criminal record.
According to Colmar, the suspect still had more than 100 rounds of ammunition and it was still unclear why he stopped shooting. It was speculative, but it cannot be ruled out that he had a specific goal.
German Chancellor Olaf Schulz expressed his deep shock after the attack. “It breaks my heart to hear such news,” he said after a conference with state premiers in Berlin.
He expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, victims and students of Heidelberg University.
Colmar said police received seven emergency calls within 43 seconds, and officers quickly assumed it was an attack. More than 400 officers were deployed.
The mayor of Heidelberg, Eckart Forzner, expressed his condolences to the victims and their families. “Not only were we stunned; we actually couldn’t believe something like this could happen here in Heidelberg.”
Heidelberg University, founded in 1386, is the oldest university in Germany and one of the oldest in Europe.
It has several universities in the picturesque city of Heidelberg, with a population of about 160,000, on the Neckar River.
The district of Neuenheimerfeld in Heidelberg, where one of the university’s main campuses is located, has been cordoned off by a large police unit.
HF