The 18-year-old
German-Iranian gunman who killed nine people in Munich on Friday began
planning the attack a year ago after visiting the German city of
Winnenden where another teenager killed 15 people in 2009, Bavarian
officials said on Sunday.
Materials
found at the gunman’s home also showed he had been hospitalized for
psychiatric care for three months around the same time, and was an avid
player of violent video games, the officials told a news conference.
One
of the games was “Counter Strike: Source”, Robert Heimberger, president
of the state crime office, said. He said it was “a game played by
nearly every known rampage killer”.
The
gunman – identified by sources as David Sonboly – called himself “Ali”
and once described the 17-year-old killer in the 2009 attack as a good
person, according to a 16-year-old youth with whom he played video games
in an online club, the German magazine Spiegel reported.
He
frequently used online video handles such as “Hate” and “Rampage
Killer”, expressed nationalistic views, and was eventually excluded from
the club because the other members were afraid of him, the magazine
cited the other youth as saying.
“We always expected something like what happened, but we never thought he could get a gun and then use it,” he said.
The
gunman was also evidently inspired by Norwegian mass killer Anders
Breivik, and likely deliberately staged the shooting on the fifth
anniversary of Breivik’s massacre of 77 people, Heimberger said.
Bavaria’s
chief prosecutor Thomas Steinhaus-Koch said the gunman was treated for
anxiety and been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment from July to
September 2015, followed by out-patient treatment as recently as last
month.
Investigators also found prescription medicines at his home, where he lived with his parents and younger brother.
He had made reference to his hospitalization in a heated exchange that was videotaped immediately after the shooting.
“I
am German,” he yelled at a bystander in a nearby apartment house after
he yelled a racial slur and threw a beer bottle. “Because of you I was
bullied for seven years.”
Officials
said authorities had investigated allegations in 2012 that the gunman
was bullied by three other children, but none of those individuals – or
any other classmates of the gunman – were among the shooting victims.
He
said it was unclear when he bought the gun, or how he paid for it,
adding that the parents of the gunman remained in shock and were not
able to be interviewed.
Reuters