Munich Gunman Likely Planned Attack for Over a Year: Officials

The gunman had been hospitalised for nearly three months for psychiatric treatment and avidly played video games.

The 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman who killed nine people in Munich on Friday began planning the attack a year ago after visiting the German city of Winnenden where another teenager killed 15 people in 2009, Bavarian officials said on Sunday.

Materials found at the gunman’s home showed he had been hospitalised for psychiatric care for three months, and was an avid player of violent video games.

One of the games was “Counter Strike: Source”, Robert Heimberger, president of the state crime office, said.

It is a game played by nearly every known rampage killer.

Heimberger

The gunman – identified by sources as David Sonboly – called himself “Ali” and once described the 17-year-old killer in the 2009 attack as a good person, according to a youth with whom he played video games in an online club, the German magazine Spiegel reported.

He frequently used online video handles such as “Hate” and “Rampage Killer”, expressed nationalistic views, and was eventually excluded from the club because the other members were afraid of him, the magazine cited the other youth as saying.

“We always expected something like what happened, but we never thought he could get a gun and then use it”, said the youth.

The gunman was also evidently inspired by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, and likely deliberately staged the shooting on the fifth anniversary of Breivik’s massacre of 77 people, Heimberger said.

Bavaria’s chief prosecutor Thomas Steinhaus-Koch said the gunman was treated for anxiety and been hospitalised for psychiatric treatment from July to September 2015.

Investigators also found prescription medicines at his home, where he lived with his parents and younger brother.

He had made reference to his hospitalisation in a heated exchange that was videotaped immediately after the shooting. “I am German,” he yelled at a bystander in a nearby apartment house after he yelled a racial slur.

Heimberger said the gunman likely purchased his weapon over the internet.

He said it was unclear when he bought the gun, or how he paid for it, adding that the parents of the gunman remained in shock and were not able to be interviewed.