Munich shooter was ‘sole perpetrator’ who fixated on massacres

A teenager who killed nine people and injured 27 more in a shooting massacre near a mall in Munich, Germany, on Friday before taking his own life had been bullied and was likely inspired by other mass shootings, German authorities said.

Without naming the 18-year-old man, who was born and raised in Munich with dual German-Iranian citizenship, police president Hubertus Andrae said at a news conference on Saturday that authorities assume he worked alone.

Officers searched his room and found documentation on “frenzied attacks,” and even though the motive is unclear, they have not drawn a connection to religion or the recent surge of refugees searching for safety in Germany.

“We are assuming that we are talking about a sole perpetrator,” Andrae said.

The shooter had a clean police record but turned up in searches twice – once for being bullied and beaten by three people and another for being robbed, according to the New York Times.

The head of Bavaria’s criminal police said that he may have hacked a young woman’s Facebook page and enticed people to come to the mall for a giveaway at 4 p.m. local time on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

Just before 6 p.m. local time, witnesses said he opened fire on the street before heading to the mall, according to the BBC.

Seven of the victims were teenagers: three were 14 years old, two were 15 and the others were 17, 19 and 20. And of the 27 that were also injured, 10 of them are in critical condition, including a 13-year-old boy, police said.

The shooter’s body was found at a nearby McDonald’s, with a 9mm Glock pistol and 300 bullets in his backpack, about two and a half hours after he started the rampage.

Exactly five years ago on Friday, Anders Behring Breivik in Norway had killed 77 people with bomb and gun attacks. German authorities said that Friday’s suspect had researched the 2011 massacre as well as other shootings. Police also found a German edition of the book “Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters,” the Times reported.

In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Peter Langman, the author of the book, said the shooter appeared to have fit a pattern of other mass murderers who researched shootings.

“It’s a little disturbing,” Langman, told the Guardian from his home in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “I don’t know quite what to make of it, I don’t know why he had it.”

People are on high alert in Germany after a teenage migrant stabbed and injured five people on a train in Bavaria in an attack claimed by the Islamic State on Monday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a televised statement on Saturday said with reports of horror coming out of the country, attacks become harder and harder to bear.

“We are in deep and profound mourning for those who will never return to their families,” Merkel said.