While there are no indications pointing to a terrorism background, local authorities did receive an anonymous message in January, raising the alarm over the 35-year-old man’s hatred of his former employer and religious groups, particularly the Jehovah’s Witnesses, of which he was a member until around 18 months ago.
The message raised questions over whether the man — who had legally purchased a semiautomatic handgun on a sports shooter license — was mentally fit to own a firearm. Investigators who subsequently checked the man’s home in February, however, did not find any evidence to justify revoking his license, police said Friday, while acknowledging those sent had not been trained to spot signs of mental illness.
A special police unit arrived within minutes of the first emergency calls Thursday night, because it happened to be stationed nearby, likely preventing far more deaths, officials said Friday. Around 50 people had gathered in the congregation Thursday night.
German officials said there are varying accounts of whether the gunman left the Jehovah’s Witnesses voluntarily in 2021 or whether he was expelled from the group. The U.S.-headquartered faith group claims 8.7 million adherents in its congregations, known as Kingdom Halls, worldwide and about 170,000 members in Germany. The hall targeted Thursday night is located in a residential area in northern Hamburg, Germany’s second most populous city.
In a tweet, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — who until 2018 served as mayor of Hamburg — said the dead and injured had fallen “victim to a brutal act of violence last night. My thoughts are with them and their relatives.” Hamburg police
Condolences also poured in from abroad, including from French President Emmanuel Macron and the U.S. State Department, which said it strongly “condemns the senseless act of violence.”
In a statement, the German Jehovah’s Witnesses group said that “our deepest sympathy goes to the families of the victims and the traumatized eyewitnesses. The local ministers are doing their best to support them in this difficult hour.”
In the Hamburg police news conference on Friday, local officials described how some victims appeared to have been shot while speaking to emergency dispatchers.
Investigators found nine empty magazines capable of holding 15 rounds each at the crime scene, while the gunman carried additional ammunition in his backpack. At their news conference on Friday, officials said they could not say with certainty whether the large number of magazines found at the scene and at the gunman’s home had been legally purchased.
The shooting comes as the German government is drafting a new law that would place tougher checks on firearm owners in the country. Despite relatively strict gun laws, Germany has a high per capita ratio of legally purchased firearms.
While mass shootings are rare, there have been a number of high-profile incidents in recent years that raised questions over loopholes in safety checks, including a racially-motivated attack in which nine people with migrant backgrounds were killed in February 2020.
The attacker had also been able to purchase his firearms legally, even though a subsequent investigation found evidence of a severe psychotic illness.
Authorities said the gunman started shooting outside the Jehovah’s Witness hall, injuring a woman who managed to flee in a car.
Gregor Miesbach told German television news agency NonstopNews that he heard over 25 shots and saw a person enter the building through a window, before opening fire inside.
A nearby resident, Lara Bauch, said she heard four rounds of gunfire Thursday night. Within each round, shots were fired “at intervals of 20 seconds to a minute,” she told German news agency DPA.
Police found several people dead and others with gunshot wounds when they arrived at the building around 9:15 p.m. local time, Hamburg police spokesman Holger Vehren said in interview from the scene Thursday night.
After arriving at the hall, police heard one last gunshot from within the Jehovah’s Witness building and found a body when they followed the sound, Vehren said.
Footage from the scene initially made authorities believe that there may be two shooters, prompting a large-scale manhunt in and around Hamburg, but authorities later said they believe the gunman acted alone.
Maham Javaid, Amar Nadhir and Kate Brady contributed to this report.
