crime
Investigations and demands for the Hamburg amok attack
View of the location in Hamburg. photo
© Jonas Walzberg/dpa
After the Hamburg amok attack, more details about the events became known – including about the 35-year-old perpetrator. But many questions are still unanswered, the investigations are ongoing.
On the second day after the killings and injuries in the premises of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg, the police are continuing their investigations. In the meantime, some details about the perpetrator are also known. The 35-year-old Philipp F. was a former member of the Hamburg community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which he left voluntarily a year and a half ago, but apparently not on good terms, as the police, prosecutors and interior authorities said on Friday.
In the act on Thursday, seven people died and the perpetrator himself, eight other people were injured. The police also counted an unborn child among the dead. According to the information, the German perpetrator was a sports shooter, had had a gun ownership card since December 2022 and had only recently been visited by the weapons authority.
Faser at the crime scene
In the afternoon, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) expressed the Federal Government’s deepest sympathy to the relatives and friends of the victims during a visit to the scene of the crime. “It’s hard to put into words what a terrible thing happened here. What a perpetrator could do with this amok attack is really horrific.” She was deeply moved, said the minister. She announced that she would check the draft for tightening the gun law again for gaps. Hamburg’s First Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) and Deputy Mayor Katharina Fegebank (Greens) also visited the crime scene and expressed the deep sympathy of the Senate and the people of Hamburg.
Hamburg’s interior senator Andy Grote (SPD) described the act as a rampage: “A rampage of this magnitude – we’ve never seen it before. It’s the worst crime, the worst crime in our city’s recent history.”
The gunman had fired more than 100 times. The fatalities are said to be four men, two women and a female fetus aged 28 weeks. The men and women are between 33 and 60 years old, said the head of state security for the police, Thomas Radszuweit. “All of the fatalities are German nationals and died as a result of gunshots.”
Semi-automatic pistol as a murder weapon
The fatal shots were fired around 9 p.m. on Thursday evening during an event in the community building in the north of Hamburg. The police were there quickly. The perpetrator shot himself. According to information from security circles, the 35-year-old shooter was not known to be an extremist. Police President Ralf Martin Meyer said he had been in legal possession of a semi-automatic pistol since December 12. It was the murder weapon. The gunman comes from Memmingen in Bavaria. According to dpa information, he had been registered in Hamburg since 2015.
According to Meyer, in January the weapons authority received an anonymous tip about a possible mental illness of Philipp F. At the beginning of February, F. was visited unannounced by two officials from the weapons authority. There were no relevant complaints. The legal possibilities had been exhausted. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the police also found a large quantity of ammunition in the apartment of the alleged perpetrator after the shots were fired.
References to dispute with Jehovah’s Witnesses
The investigators do not rule out possible conflicts within the religious community. Police chief Meyer said there were indications of a dispute “possibly from the area of Jehovah’s Witnesses”. According to Radszuweit, the gunman left the community voluntarily a year and a half ago, “but obviously not for the better.”
The parliamentary director of the Greens parliamentary group, Irene Mihalic, told the editorial network Germany (RND) that in future not only under-25s should have to submit a medical certificate if they apply for a gun permit. The domestic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Sebastian Hartmann, called for clarification as to why the controls on the perpetrator had not provided any signs of danger and had not led to the withdrawal of the gun owner’s license.