'Are you all dead yet?' Police gun down ex-student, 17, in German school massacre
11th March 2009[/align]
A deranged teenager who grew up in a home that was full of guns targeted women in a bloody rampage that left 16 people dead, it emerged tonight. Clad in black combat gear, Tim Kretschmer, 17, took one of his father's 16 weapons and went to his former school in Germany where he gunned down 10 children and three teachers. Eight of the children were girls, and two of the teachers were women. The only words he was heard to utter during the schoolroom slaughter were: 'Are you all dead yet?'
The women teachers died trying to shield the children from his bullets as he kept his finger on the trigger of his automatic weapon, shooting all his victims in the head. After leaving the school he killed three others, before shooting himself during a gun battle with police.
There was no immediate explanation of a motive, but some speculated the proportion of female victims suggested he had something against women. 'There are no indications at the moment of any warning or suggestion that the attack could have been foreseen,' Heribert Rech, interior minister of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, told a news conference. But it is conspicuous that most of his victims were females,' he added.
At the school he went first to Class 10 D, his old class before he flunked out of school with no qualifications. 'They still had their pens in their hands when he started firing,' said Heribert Rech, a local politician who visited the massacre site.
Privileged, the son of wealthy parents, a boy who was envied by some classmates because he always had pocket money, Kretschmer had written on a website in the past: 'What do I like about myself? Nothing. What do I hate about myself? Nothing. Job: sadly, still at school.' Kretschmer returned to the Albertville Secondary School in Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart, at about 9.30 a.m. and began firing with a 9-millimetre Beretta automatic pistol at the students.
Police said Kretschmer – a former table-tennis champ at the school - donned a black SEK police uniform of the kind worn by the elite police officers who were on his trail minutes after the massacre. He also put on a gas mask to give him a more sinister aspect as he set out on his orgy of killing. One woman teacher stood in front of some of the children with a 'defiant look on her face.' 'He gunned her down with ice-cold efficiency,' said a police spokesman. Another teacher slammed the door of her classroom in his face. But he kicked it open and shot her in the face as she spread her arms in a bid to protect the children.
Police reported that many of the injured suffered ricochet gunshot wounds as the bullets from Kretschmer’s gun bounced wildly off the walls of the school. He fired most bullets into classroom 10 D. He went in and out of the room three times, speaking the only words he uttered throughout the massacre: 'Are you all dead yet?'
Youngsters who could hurled themselves through the first floor windows of the building to escape his hail of bullets and ran for cover, screaming; 'He's killing everyone, he's killing everyone!' When he left he shot dead a gardener in a psychiatric hospital opposite the school. Then he hi-jacked a car to escape through the dragnet of armed police sealing off all roads around Winnenden. He told the shocked driver to 'get me out of town.'
On the autobahn to Stuttgart 12 miles away he released his hostage and drove off for his final encounter with police at a shopping centre. After shooting dead two innocent shoppers he raked a police car with gunfire, seriously wounding two officers. Police sharpshooters fired back, wounding him in the leg, but last night police said the youth had died after he turned his gun on himself.
Police stormed his home shortly after the killing spree and took his mother into custody for questioning. His father Joerg is a wealthy businessman who owns a paper factory, and belongs to a gun club. He legally owned 16 guns -- 15 of which were safely locked away. His son had taken the 16th. His mother Ute works as an office clerk and he has a younger sister Jasmin, aged 14.
'He tried to buy friends with his money but he couldn’t get any,' said Mario Hofffman, a school contemporary. 'He was known as a loser who was miserable at his lot,' said another. But mostly they said he was average – average looks, average intelligence, average tastes.
School shootings have been on the rise in Germany in recent years. In February 2002, a 22-year-old gunman killed the headmaster and seriously injured another person in a vocational training centre he attended at Freising, near Munich. The worst occurred in April 2002 when expelled student Robert Steinhauser gunned down 16 people before turning his gun on himself. Yesterday’s spree equals that. In November 2006, a former student at a vocational school in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany went a shooting spree in the establishment, injuring 37 people before turning his gun on himself.
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Mental stuff. The person who was hijacked and let go will have some story to tell... maybe that's why he didn't kill them?
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