Germany Shocked by School Shooting Incident

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, April 27, 2002

Germany Shocked by School Shooting Incident

German leaders on Friday expressed their disbelief and shock at a school shooting incident occurred at the Gutenberg Secondary School in Erfurt, capital of the Thueringen state, in which 18 people were killed, including 14 teachers, 2 students, 1 policeman and the killer himself, and 6 others wounded.

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German leaders on Friday expressed their disbelief and shock at a school shooting incident, in which 18 people were killed and six others wounded.

German President Johannes Rau said that "Germany is saddened by this unbelievable incident", which occurred at the Gutenberg Secondary School in Erfurt, capital of the Thueringen state, earlier in the day.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that he was "stunned by this horrible crime", and "this event goes beyond all imagination."

The chancellor's office lowered the national flag half-mast to mourn nine teachers, 4 students and one policeman killed in the tragic event.

A former schooler seeking revenge

The incident started at around 11:00 a.m. local time, when a 19- year-old former schooler, armed with a pump-gun and a pistol, went into the school and started to shoot randomly.

The killer had been expelled by the school and apparently sought revenge.

During the rampage, a handwritten sign reading "HILFE" - "Help" - was pasted to a fourth-floor window, and behind it a girl could be seen in the room. Police who later searched the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium - which had students from grades five through 12 - said they found bodies strewn in hallways, and even bathrooms.

"We found a horrible scene," police spokesman Manfred Etzel told N-TV television.

When policemen arrived at the school after receiving an emergency call, they were met with a hail of bullets and one of them was also fatally wounded.

The killer then shot himself and was found dead in an empty classroom by special police searching the school building.

The school has 750 students and was at the time of incident full of students taking exams.

The remaining 180 students were safely evacuated from the school, located in a residential area of the eastern city of Erfurt. After searching the building, police said they could not confirm accounts by school students that there was a second gunman.

Like other parts of the former communist East Germany, Erfurt, a city of 220,000 about 150 miles southwest of Berlin, has been economically struggling. The school, housed in a 1908 building, has a high academic reputation.

A 19-year-old killer dressed all in black

Shocked students who fled the shooting reported seeing a man dressed all in black roaming the hallways with a gun.

"I heard shooting and thought it was a joke," said 13-year-old Melanie Steinbrueck, choking back tears. "But then I saw a teacher dead in the hallway in front of Room 209 and a gunman in black carrying a weapon."

"The guy was dressed all in black - gloves, cap, everything was black," said Juliane Blank, 13. "He must have opened the door without being heard and forced his way into the classroom."

"We ran out into the hallways. We just wanted to get out," she said.

Sixth-grader Martin Streng said he was in math class when he heard gunfire coming from a classroom down the hall. As he and other students filed into the hallway to flee the building, they saw a man with a gun down the corridor behind them, Streng said.

Outside the school, a police officer with a megaphone urged parents to register their children's names before leaving the scene. Groups of dazed and shocked students huddled in the street, hugging and crying. Ambulances and police cars massed in front of the school.

It was Germany's second school shooting in recent months. In February, a 22-year-old German who recently lost his job, shot and killed two former bosses and his old high school's principal in a rampage outside Munich.

In what may be the deadliest mass killing at a school, a farmer angry about his tax bill set off dynamite at a school in Bath, Mich., on May 18, 1927, killing 43 people.

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