Published on 26 April 2002, Reuters

Eighteen Dead in Student Rampage Through German School

A student bent on revenge after being expelled from his school shot dead 14 teachers, two students and a police officer before killing himself Friday in a small university town in eastern Germany, police said.

Armed with a pump-action shotgun and a handgun, the 19-year-old walked though the Gutenberg high school in the town of Erfurt, blasting teachers as he found them in corridors and classrooms.

"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," said one police spokesman.

Published on 26 April 2002, CBC

18 die in German school shooting

A lone gunman killed 14 teachers on Friday in a school in Germany. He also killed two female students and a police officer before turning the gun on himself. Police said at least six other people were wounded.

The 19-year-old shooter was a former student at the Johann Gutenberg school in Erfurt, a city of 200,000 people about 225 kilometres southwest of Berlin. The gunman had been expelled from the school several weeks ago.

Outside the school, groups of students huddled together, hugging and crying. A police officer with a megaphone told parents to register their children's names before leaving the scene.

Published on 27 April 2002, AFP

Nightmarish images from school massacre jolt Germany

Bodies lying in hallways and shocked students in tears formed a landscape of horror after a shooting massacre in a German high school left 18 people dead including the gunman.

In a bloodbath of a scope unseen in German postwar history, the 19-year-old assailant, an expelled student, left a trail of corpses throughout the Gutenberg high school in this eastern German town and shocked and saddened the nation.

As the first police officers burst into the school building just before noon, they encountered the first signs of a nightmarish scene of carnage: the bodies of dead men, women and teenagers slain just minutes before.

One officer, a 42-year-old father of two, was gunned down immediately during an attempt to rescue students believed to be held hostage.

Fighting back tears, Erfurt police chief Rainer Grube told reporters: "It was his daughter's birthday today."

Published on 27 April 2002, The Times

Schoolboy's deadly revenge

He struck at about 11am under the vaulted roof of the school’s entrance hall, shooting two teachers without a word. The school caretaker ran to alert the police.

“We were sitting in class doing our work and we heard a shooting sound,” said Filip Niemann, a pupil. “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 metres in front of us there was a masked person in black holding his gun at his shoulder. He stretched out his gun and fired. We saw a teacher fall to the ground. We just turned and ran.”

The youth ran amok, chasing teaching staff and secretaries through the corridors. Some were killed while hiding in the lavatories, standing on the seats. Others were shot dead in the staffroom or the school secretary’s office.

Published on April 28, 2002, Scotland on Sunday

How school killer stopped slaughter

"GO AHEAD and shoot me," the teacher said to the gunman, but somehow Robert Steinhäuser’s reserves of hatred had run out. The 19-year-old’s shoulders drooped, he lowered his pistol and said: ‘‘That’s it for today.’’

Rainer Heise, a history teacher, grabbed his opportunity and swung the former pupil into a classroom and locked the door. Steinhäuser could have blown the door off its hinges, but having killed 13 teachers, two teenagers and a policewoman, he no longer had the desire to go on.

Heise was lucky to have met Steinhäuser as his bloodlust was on the wane. The 19-year-old was striding through the corridors of his former school looking for his next victim when he came across the teacher.

Heise, speaking yesterday, described how he grabbed the youth’s shirt and tried to talk to him. "He then pulled off his mask and I said: ‘Robert?’"

Once the mask was removed, Steinhäuser found he could not kill anyone else. He allowed himself to be locked in the classroom where, within minutes, he took his own life.

The gunman was believed to have taken a legally-held pistol and pump-action shotgun to the school, which had expelled him two months previously. He returned on Friday to resit a maths exam which he clearly had no intention of taking.

"Many of the victims were killed with headshots. He clearly was a trained marksman," said Bernhard Vogel, premier of the state of Thuringia, of which Erfurt is the capital.

Published on April 28, 2002, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)

GERMAN GUNMAN TARGETED TEACHERS
GUN CLUB MEMBER ANGRY AT EXPULSION FOR FORGED EXCUSES

Robert Steinhäuser arrived at Johann Gutenberg High School in this medieval eastern German city on Friday morning with a bag containing a pump-action shotgun, a pistol and more than 500 rounds of ammunition.

He went to a bathroom where he donned a ski mask and took out three magazines -- each with 17 bullets -- but left the bag with most of the ammunition. Tall, thickset and dressed all in black, he emerged looking like a ninja warrior, students said.

Published on April 28, 2002, The Record (New Jersey)

TEACHER TELLS OF TRAPPING GUNMAN
LOCKED HIM IN ROOM OF GERMAN SCHOOL

A history teacher recounted on Saturday how he confronted the teenager who carried out a school shooting rampage that has shocked Germany. After challenging the gunman to shoot him, the teacher shoved the 19-year-old into a classroom and locked the door.

A huge mound of flowers - tulips, roses, sunflowers, lilies - spilled down the school's front steps in this eastern city Saturday, a day after the rampage in which the gunman, identified as Robert Steinhäuser, killed 16 people.

Published on April 29, 2002, BBC World

Gun laws

Politicians are also due to re-examine Germany's gun laws in the light of Friday's events.

Robert Steinhaeuser, a member of a gun club, had acquired both the weapons and ammunition he used in Friday's massacre legally.

He had licenses for both the Austrian-made Glock pistol, which carries up to 18 rounds, and for the pump-action shot-gun he had strapped to his back when he marched through the school on the rampage, killing former teachers, two pupils and a policeman who was called to the scene.

Mr Schily told German television that the government would examine thoroughly whether the age at which one can legally acquire a weapon should be lifted from 18 to 21, at which age, he argued, people were more "stable".

Gun clubs have however been quick to point out that stricter controls on legal weapons will make few inroads into stopping crime, as most shootings involve illegal arms.

Published on April 29, 2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

SCHOOL GUNMAN HADN'T TOLD PARENTS HE WAS EXPELLED
POLICE FIND VIOLENT COMICS AND COMPUTER GAMES WHEN SEARCHING HIS HOME

The teen-age gun enthusiast who killed 16 people and himself at his former school enjoyed violent computer games and kept his parents in the dark about his expulsion from school, police said Sunday.

Investigators added new details to the troubling profile of Robert Steinhäuser, the 19-year-old behind one of the deadliest school shootings ever. They said that hours before his deadly rampage Friday, he told his parents he was going to take a math exam.

Published on May 1, 2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

GERMAN TEEN APPARENTLY PLANNED SCHOOL ATTACK

The German teen-ager who killed 16 people and himself at his former school apparently planned the attack for months, acquiring the permit he used to buy the weapons just weeks after he was expelled last fall, officials said Tuesday.

Authorities investigating Robert Steinhäuser's past revised earlier accounts that he had been expelled only weeks before the massacre Friday at Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium.

"It must have taken a long time to collect all the ammunition,"

Published on May 2, 2002, BBC World

Shame of German gunman's family

Relatives of Robert Steinhäuser, the German teenager who last week killed 16 people and himself in a shooting spree, have spoken out about their horror and shame.

"The sorrow, despair and helplessness of our family are immeasurable," Steinhäuser's brother, father and grandfather wrote in an open letter to a local newspaper.

"We are infinitely sorry that our son and brother carried out such a horrific act on the victims, their relatives, the people of Erfurt and Thuringia and on the whole of Germany," his family wrote.

They say they had no idea of his plans. "Until this brutal act of madness, we were a totally normal family," they wrote.