German Teen Kills 17, Self in Shooting Spree at School

ERFURT, Germany — A 19-year-old angered by his expulsion burst into a secondary school Friday carrying a pump-action shotgun and a revolver and shot to death 15 adults and two students before killing himself.

The attack evoked the nightmarish images of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado three years ago. Tearful parents ran toward the Johann Gutenberg secondary school in search of their children, and paramedics crouched along sidewalks and cobblestone streets to tend to the wounded.

The killing spree, at least the fourth homicidal attack at a German school in less than three years, sent shock waves across a nation that has long considered itself far less vulnerable to the violence that has afflicted U.S. campuses.

The shootings, which left 14 school employees, a policewoman, two girls and the gunman dead and at least six wounded, also sparked public soul-searching about what compels a distressed youth to turn violent and what society might do to prevent such disturbing events.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said he and his fellow citizens were “stunned and horrified” and urged Germans to examine the social as well as political failures that might have contributed to the tragedy.

“There are questions we have to answer here as a whole society,” he said.

Interior Minister Otto Schily termed it “a macabre coincidence” that the shootings came on a day the government managed to push through a bill in Parliament that would impose tighter controls on gun ownership and harsher penalties for illegal possession.

Fellow students described the gunman, whose identity was being withheld Friday to protect his family’s privacy, as upset by his expulsion early this year and the refusal of school administrators to let him take exams required for university entrance. But Isabell Hartung, who described herself as an acquaintance, told the N-TV news channel by telephone that she couldn’t imagine he would react so violently.

“I think it was a snap decision,” she said. “I can’t believe he could have planned this act or thought about it for any length of time.”

However, some students at the school for fifth- through 12th-graders, told reporters that the gunman had been threatening revenge over his expulsion.

Acquiring guns, even amid stringent German licensing and controls, is little problem, several young people here said.

“You can get them quite easily. Just go to any big city or, even better, to the Czech Republic or Poland,” said Stefan Burgmann, 18, who attends a nearby school.

According to witnesses, the masked gunman clad in black shot two school employees in the building foyer and then prowled the corridors, occasionally opening a classroom door and firing at the teacher.

Police who stormed the school after he barricaded himself in a classroom described the scene as the most gruesome they had witnessed. There was “blood everywhere, bodies in the hallways, in the classrooms, in the bathrooms,” Erfurt Police Chief Rainer Grube told reporters.

“The perpetrator was a former pupil at the school who had been expelled. We can give no more details at the moment,” Grube said.

“He took his own life, apparently when he saw that there was no way out for him,” Grube said, quoting police commandos who stormed the school.

Some students who managed to escape the building after the first shots were fired told police that they saw two gunmen. But authorities later discounted the involvement of another person.

The deadly drama began shortly after 11 a.m., when a janitor at the school called police after hearing the first shots. After a 42-year-old policewoman who was among the first officers at the scene was killed, the commando unit was sent in to conduct a room-to-room search for the youth.

The gunman is believed to have shot himself early in the search. However, students and teachers on the upper floors--apparently fearful of encountering him if they tried to leave--were trapped in their classrooms for hours before police made their way though the massive five-story building. The last 180 of nearly 700 in the building were evacuated six hours after the shootout began.

At one fourth-floor window, a clearly frightened young woman was filmed by television cameras as she posted a piece of paper with the word Hilfe--help in German--during the tense standoff.

“Whether this was a lone act or there were accomplices cannot be said at this hour. I’m against making any kind of speculation,” said Bernhard Vogel, governor of Thuringia state, where Erfurt is the capital. “The reality is that, after something so uniquely terrible, there are no quick answers. What is clear is that in this hour of need, what is required is solidarity. People must stand together and work through their outrage over such a contemptible act.”

The gunman appeared to have singled out teachers in his rampage, but the circumstances of the slaying of the two students were unclear.

The death toll matched that of the March 1996 killings in the Scottish town of Dunblane, in which 16 students and a teacher were killed before the perpetrator took his own life. In April 1999, 15 died at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., including the two teenage gunmen.

By nightfall, police in Erfurt had removed the barricades that kept onlookers and neighbors at a safe distance from the scene and residents began bringing candles and flowers to place before the stately 1908 building. The school is named for the inventor of the printing press.

At 9 p.m., church bells were rung throughout the city in memory of the dead.

Attention quickly turned to the survivors of a horror most German youths know only from media accounts. Schroeder, in his comments to reporters outside the Berlin chancellery, said his sympathies went out not just to the victims’ families but also to the police and teachers “whose difficult work must go on and will certainly be harder because of this.”

Schily urged Germans to reflect on the “alarming growth of aggressive behavior” in schools and the underlying causes of the tragedy, especially “how the virtual world might have influenced this event.” He was referring to Internet sites and video games that allow students to commit simulated beatings, torture and killings.

In Cologne, the head of the Society for Human Protection, which treats victims of psychological trauma, warned that the images of the attack will “torment the subconscious for months.”

“The greatest danger in the emotional aftermath is that children may develop feelings of guilt,” psychiatrist Christian Luedke told the German Press Agency. “They might come to believe they bear some responsibility for what the one who ran amok has done.”

Friday’s attack occurred as legislators were debating a bill to strengthen already strict laws on gun ownership. Although 10 million weapons are registered in this country, authorities estimate that there are twice as many illegal guns, most smuggled in from Eastern Europe.

“The problem is not with legally obtained firearms but with illegal weapons,” Schily said. “It is an open question whether something like this would have been preventable under the new law.”

Germans seeking to buy a hunting rifle must undergo extensive background checks lasting up to a year. Collectors and target-shooting enthusiasts must join a sports club to obtain a license for their weapons. Handguns are largely prohibited except to members of the armed forces and police.

The bill passed by Parliament after the legislators debated, unaware of the school shooting, will require licensing of air pistols as well. It also imposes stiffer penalties for those found to possess guns for which they have no permits.

At least three other homicidal acts have been committed in German schools in recent years. In February, a 22-year-old man angry over being laid off killed his trade-school principal and two former bosses in the Munich suburb of Freising in Bavaria state. A March 2000 incident, also in Bavaria, left a 16-year-old gunman in a coma after he killed a teacher and then shot himself. In the eastern city of Meissen, a 15-year-old student stabbed his teacher to death in November 1999 to collect on fellow students’ bets that he wouldn’t do it.

Erfurt, a university city of 200,000, was once home to theologian Martin Luther, who lived here from 1501 to 1511.

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Times staff writer Williams reported from Berlin and special correspondent Falkenberg from Erfurt. Reane Oppl in Bonn also contributed to this report.