Germany in Shock as 18 Die in School Bloodbath
Fri Apr 26, 5:17 PM ET
By Fiona Shaikh

ERFURT, Germany (Reuters) - A student bent on bloody revenge after being expelled from his school shot dead 17 people, mostly teachers, before killing himself Friday in the worst murder spree in post-war Germany.

Armed with a pump-action shotgun and a handgun, the 19-year-old man, masked and clad in black, walked calmly through the Gutenberg high school in the eastern town of Erfurt, pumping bullets at teachers he found in the corridors and classrooms.

He killed 14 teachers, two pupils, a police officer and then himself. Six others were wounded.

A number of students who escaped unharmed from the school said a second gunmen had been in the school. Police said late on Friday they were investigating the reports and added they could not rule out the possibility a second assailant had escaped.

More than 1,000 mourners attended somber ceremonies in a cathedral and a nearby church. Many of the grief-stricken people lit candles for the dead. Tears filled the eyes of many of the mourners.

The scale of the murder, rivaling some of the worst school killings in the world, stunned Germans, whose sense of security was upset just two weeks ago by the deaths of 11 German tourists in a bomb blast in Tunisia.

"Police called to the scene found a scene of horror. There were dead people in the corridors, in the classrooms, one was found in the toilet," a police spokesman said.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said he was staggered by the crime and canceled an election campaign event planned for Saturday. Flags on the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin flew at half-mast.

"This is so unique that it exceeds one's powers of imagination. I think we all need time to work this through in our minds," Schroeder told reporters. "There are questions here that we have to answer as a whole society."

The killer, who has not been named, was expelled from the school several months ago and banned from taking his "Abitur," a high-school exam required for entry into university.

The drama began shortly before 11 a.m. (0900 GMT) when the school janitor rang police to report hearing shots in school.

TEACHERS THE TARGETS

"We were sitting in class doing our work and we heard a shooting sound," said Filip Niemann, a student who survived the bloodbath. "We joked about it and the teacher smiled."

"The teacher let us go out and see what was happening and when we left the classroom, three to four meters in front of us, there was a masked person in black holding his gun at his shoulder," said the teen-ager, visibly shocked and his voice trembling.

"He stretched out his gun and fired. We saw a teacher fall to the ground. We just turned and ran. I heard from other kids the gunmen opened classroom doors and aimed at teachers."

"The pupils ran out of the classroom and he came after us and shot a teacher next to me," one girl, who was not named, told German radio. "He looked deep into my eyes."

One of two police officers who arrived at the school after the janitor's phone call was immediately shot dead, police said.

Police had initially spoken of two gunmen, but later said they believed the student had been acting alone. Local media reported witnesses had spoken of a second gunman and police said they were checking reports he may have slipped out of the building with other students during the chaos of the evacuation.

They were also reportedly checking the plumbing of the building for any trace of a second assailant.

All flags in Erfurt were at half-mast. Church bells rang across town.

TRAPPED FOR HOURS

About 700 students between the ages of 10 and 19 attend the imposing early 20th-century Jugendstil building.

Some were trapped in classrooms for hours, too terrified to leave as the gunman roamed. A piece of paper reading "Help" appeared on an upper floor window during the afternoon.

Later Friday evening someone put up another sign reading "Warum?" (Why?)

Armed police found the gunman dead in a room after combing the corridors for several hours.

Other mass killings at schools in recent years include the 1996 murder of 16 children and their teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane by a lone gunman who later killed himself.

In April 1999 in the United States, two student gunmen killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Both events caused soul-searching in Britain and America about a loss of moral values and insufficient gun laws.

The shock of the murder is deep in Germany, where generations have grown used to a life of peace, prosperity and physical safety after the horrors of World War Two.

Interior Minister Otto Schily said: "We have to ask ourselves what is wrong with society where such a young person causes such calamity and acts with such aggression.

"This student seems to have had such hatred because he was expelled and couldn't sit his exam that he was driven to this terrible deed."

Schily said it was macabre coincidence that the German parliament had Friday passed a gun control law tightening rules on ownership.

Germany already has strict laws governing the right to a gun, but experts say the country is awash with illegal weapons smuggled into the country from eastern Europe and the Balkans.

"Even if I believed in God, I would not believe in him any more, How could he let something like this happen?" asked student survivor Niemann. "What I have seen today will stay with me for the rest of my life."

Two quotes really disturb my spirit in this article.

"This student seems to have had such hatred because he was expelled and couldn't sit his exam that he was driven to this terrible deed."[B]

I hear so often from non-believing friends/acquaintances that they do not believe in evil. There is no such thing and it was a human creation designed to keep people in line . . . so go the arguments. I guess not believing in evil has been very beneficial?

But yet when something terrible like this massacre happens, "he was driven to it." What about "he chose to do this". And evil most definitely led him to delusion? I guess that one could read into this quote along those lines. Why is it so hard to condemn something so evil as this for what it is . . .[B]evil. And what about the concept of personal responsibility. This child chose to act out in anger because he was expelled. As a public school teacher, this affects me greatly and our children need to be better educated and armed with the spiritual armor to resits such temptations from the evil one.

"Even if I believed in God, I would not believe in him any more, How could he let something like this happen?" asked student survivor Niemann. "What I have seen today will stay with me for the rest of my life."

Many people have been misled by the philosophical heresies of Christianity in the west and have not been taught the truth about God and creation and the difference therein.

I weep for the lost souls and for Western Europe.

What are your thoughts?

May the Lord grant peaceful rest to the souls of the departed.

Eternal Memory.
ALity

Many people have been misled by the philosophical heresies of Christianity in the west and have not been taught the truth about God and creation and the difference therein.

What does this mean? Are you one of those people who thinks that the Catholic Church has instilled some false sense of who God is?

Robert K.

Ality,

I'm not sure any more. Once I felt that this all was bad, now I'm not sure. Not that killing is good. But perhaps more murder needs to touch closer to home, perhaps more people need to be in fear.

We in the world have for a long time now loved the John Gotti's of the world, we have hated the Crusader and the Mujahadien (spelling? - holy Muslim warrior). Now perhaps it is just for us to get the reward of what we've wanted as a society - a world community.

LET THE VIOLENCE REIGN IN!

May be just, may be, from out of the darkness hearts will be moved and God will bring us into more peaceful times.

I don't know.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ality:

"Even if I believed in God, I would not believe in him any more, How could he let something like this happen?" asked student survivor Niemann. "What I have seen today will stay with me for the rest of my life."

I emphathize with young Niemann.

Any normal person who has been the eyewitness to mass slaughter must inevitably doubt the existence or benevolence of God.

Young Niemann shows a very healthy response to the tragedy he has been an eyewitness to, i.e., he shows that he is fully human. Only the poor soul who is psychotic can look upon the suffering of others and remain totally unaffected.

It is small comfort to many to rationalize that the suffering of the victims of this tragedy is the result of the sins and irresponsibilities of the killer.

Why, if God is a good and loving deity, would He allow the innocent to suffer because of the sins of those who are evil? Positing "free will" as an answer simply compounds one's doubts by raising even more questions about the nature of God, including His intelligence, omnistience, etc.

We are fortunate that there are many different religions, "religions within religions," and philosophies from which one can struggle to cull answers to the unanswerable.

Any adequate answer must be very personal and predicated on individual experience and background. No single religion or philosophy can adequately answer--for all people and under all circumstances--these very difficult questions.

I pray that young Niemann will not succumb to despair, but will search--Inshallah--until he has found some light in the darkness. Perhaps "some light" is the most we can expect as dwellers within this mere gateway to Paradise.

Al'ham'du'allah for His gift of reason and the desire to know His mind to the best of our human ability.

Salaam to all who have the courage to doubt and wonder.

Abdur

[ 04-27-2002: Message edited by: Abdur Islamovic ]