A TEENAGER who killed 15 people in a shooting rampage in Germany on Wednesday warned in a chatroom the night before that he planned to go to his former school with weapons and stage a “proper barbecue”. The website, however, claimed the message was a hoax.
Tim Kretschmer gave an explicit online warning of his deadly plan, said Heribert Rech, interior minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
“I’ve had enough,” Mr Rech quoted from the chatroom message. “Always the same. Everybody’s laughing at me. No one sees my potential. I’m serious. I have weapons and I will go to my former school in the morning and have a proper barbecue. Maybe I’ll get away. Listen out. You will hear of me tomorrow. Remember the place’s name: Winnenden.”
Rech told reporters that Kretschmer’s chatroom partner had not taken the message seriously but had told his father after he saw reports of the shootings.
Krautchan.net and its chatroom users, however, immediately denied that any such warning was posted on the site. The London Times reported that it had been told that the message was a faked-up image file first posted more than three hours after Kretschmer had killed himself.
Krautchan is an “imageboard” site or “Chan”, which means that its primary purpose is for the posting and discussion of images, many of them humorous, photoshopped topical images.
The Krautchan homepage carried a curt message that it was down because its servers could not cope with the rush of traffic, adding: “There’s nothing to see anyway, since the German press was unfortunately fooled (and probably not for the first time either) by a forgery.”
German police stood by its claims. “We are completely convinced of the veracity of the post,” spokesman Klaus Hinderer said.
Kretschmer, described by neighbours as a loner with a fondness for violent videos, shot dead 12 people at his old school and three more outside before turning the gun on himself when police cornered him. Officials revealed yesterday that Kretschmer had received psychiatric treatment for depression between April and September, before breaking off the sessions. The motive for the attack remained unclear, although he seems to have targeted women. Eight of the nine students and all three of the teachers he killed in the school were female.
Investigators said they had found pornography on his computer and violent video games.
Weeping students placed flowers and candles at their school, struggling to come to terms with the massacre.
Kretschmer fired 112 rounds, 60 in the school, and had 109 unused rounds with him when his body was found. German authorities may press charges against his father, a member of a shooting club who had 15 guns and 4,600 rounds of ammunition at home. Kretschmer shot many of his victims in the head at close range with his father’s legally-registered 9mm Beretta pistol.
The other 14 guns were locked in a gun closet as required by German law but the Beretta was kept in the father’s bedroom, police said.
“Everything here points to negligence on the part of the father as far as the storage of this weapon is concerned,” police spokesman Ralf Michelfelder said.
Stuttgart prosecutor Siegfried Mahler said the father could be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter if evidence arose that his son had warned him of his plans.
Germany toughened its gun laws in 2002 after 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser shot dead 16 people, mainly teachers, and himself at a high school in Erfurt.
Interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Reuters that he saw no need to tighten gun controls, asking whether it was useful that Germany’s two main TV channels showed boxing matches on Saturday evenings and criticising a rise in violent films. – (Reuters)