Protocol of Panic: search for motive of gunman

Created: 2022-01-25Updated: 2022-01-25 4:36 PM

People lay flowers and candles on the side of the road in front of a university building.

© Uwe Anspach/dpa

Even the day after the rampage in Heidelberg, the horror is great.

Why does a young student shoot fellow students with a rifle?

The police hope to be able to bring light into the darkness soon.

Heidelberg - It is a record of panic that Baden-Württemberg's Interior Minister Thomas Strobl spoke about in detail on Tuesday.

At 12:24 p.m. on Monday, seven emergency calls were received by the police in Heidelberg.

Six minutes later, three squad cars pull up on campus.

At 12:33 p.m., officers have already donned their protective gear and are beginning to comb through the university building, room by room.

At 12.43 p.m. they are in the lecture hall where the shots were fired, which not only shocked Heidelberg: an 18-year-old student ran amok, shot a 23-year-old woman in the head, she died on Monday afternoon as a result.

Three other students are injured.

At 12:51 the police found the perpetrator outside the building - dead, he probably shot himself.

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What prompted the young man to shoot around in the lecture hall is still a mystery one day after the fact.

At 12:32 p.m., just a few minutes after the emergency calls, the perpetrator's father called the police and informed the officers that his son had announced the crime to him via WhatsApp.

According to the police, the student wrote "that people now have to be punished".

Strobl could not say on Tuesday exactly when the son's message reached the father.

Now is the time for the investigators, the minister emphasizes again and again. "Science around the world is looking at Heidelberg with dismay and questioning." An investigative team with 32 officers and the name "Botanik" has started work. The name is due to the fact that the affected university building borders on the botanical garden.

The investigators are primarily concentrating on the motive of the assassin, examining the student's surroundings. The police are also evaluating digital devices that the special task force (SEK) seized during the search of his apartment. He is confident that the evaluation could provide clues as to the motives, says Strobl. In addition, the two corpses are examined by forensic experts at the Heidelberg University Hospital.

One thing is clear: the shooter was only 18 years old and German, he lived in Mannheim, studied biology and had never been noticed by the police.

There is no evidence of a politically or religiously motivated act, says Strobl.

He had heard that the perpetrator was said to have been under mental treatment, but that is the subject of an ongoing investigation.

The Minister of the Interior is also unable to say whether the perpetrator and the victim knew each other.

In general, a person can become a rampage "because they experience the existing or subjectively perceived insults from childhood through adolescence to young adulthood as particularly bad," says police psychologist Adolf Gallwitz on radio station SWR Aktuell.

In deadly attacks like the one in Heidelberg, gunmen have a common thought pattern.

"He was looking for a grandiose way of going under," says Gallwitz.

"A suicide was ultimately just too banal for him." The perpetrators are not loners and "not always just people who are seriously mentally ill".

The question of how the biology student got hold of the two long guns, one of which he used for the killing spree, is still unanswered.

The 18-year-old is said to have bought the guns abroad a few days ago.

He still had 100 rounds of ammunition in his backpack.

At the same time, politicians are looking at the victims, their families and those who had to witness the attack.

30 students were in the classroom when the shots rang out.

The Baden-Württemberg state cabinet commemorates the victims in a minute's silence on Tuesday.

"This terrible act of violence really hit and shook us," says Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens).

He and Strobl call on those affected to seek psychological help.

Strobl reports that 26 students and two relatives have already been approached.

"The university should and will remain a fear-free space for young people."

The experience could lead to post-traumatic stress disorders if those affected were not treated, warns the head of the German police union, Ralf Kusterer.

"They won't forget that for the rest of their lives."

The three injured are meanwhile released on Tuesday after their outpatient treatment in a clinic.

According to the police, you are on the road to physical recovery.

dpa