Man suspected of killing seven at Hamburg Jehovah's Witness hall pictured
German police say the motive is unclear, though the attacker is thought to have been a member of the same church, as Ian Woods reports
An unborn baby died in a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness meeting hall in the German city of Hamburg, police have said, as politicians denounce the deadly attack.
Authorities say a gunman stormed a service at his former Jehovah’s Witness congregation, killing six people before taking his own life after police arrived.
Police said eight people were also wounded, four of them seriously, including a woman who was 28 weeks pregnant and lost the baby.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the death toll could rise.
All of the victims were German citizens apart from two wounded women, one with Ugandan citizenship and one with Ukrainian. Thomas Radszuweit, a Hamburg security official, said the man was a 35-year-old German national whom he identified only as Philipp F. in line with German privacy rules.
Police said he had left the congregation “voluntarily, but apparently not on good terms,” about a year-and-a-half ago. A website registered in the name of someone who fits the police description says that he grew up in the Bavarian town of Kempten in “a strict religious evangelical household”. The website, which is filled with business jargon, also links to a self-published book about “God, Jesus Christ and Satan”.
Police gave no motive for Thursday night’s attack, but they acknowledged recently receiving an anonymous tip that claimed the man believed to be the shooter showed anger toward Jehovah’s Witnesses and might be psychologically unfit to own a gun.
Hamburg police chief Ralf Martin Meyer said the suspected gunman had a weapons license and legally owned a semi-automatic pistol.
He added that the man was visited by officers after they received an anonymous tip in January, claiming that he had “particular anger toward religious believers, in particular toward Jehovah’s Witnesses and his former employer”. Officers said the man was cooperative and found no grounds to take away his weapon, according to Meyer. “The bottom line is that an anonymous tip in which someone says they’re worried a person might have a psychological illness isn’t in itself a basis for (such) measures,” he said.
Authorities are now focusing their investigation on the motive for the attack, which took place in the Gross Borstel district of Germany’s second-biggest city, but prosecutors said there was no evidence for a terrorist link.
Chancellor Scholz, a former Hamburg mayor, described the shooting as “a brutal act of violence.”
A spokesperson for Mr Scholz, Christiane Hoffmann, referred to it as a “shooting rampage” rather than a suspected terrorist attack.
She told reporters in Berlin: “The suspected perpetrator shot at several people during an event held by the congregation.
“Our thoughts in these difficult hours are with the relatives, families and friends of the victims and with those who were wounded by this act. We wish the wounded a swift recovery.”
Officers reportedly reached the hall while the attack was ongoing - and heard one more shot after they arrived, according to witnesses and authorities. They did not use their own firearms, a police spokesman said.
Police officers arrived at the scene to find several people seriously injured and some dead
The scene of the shooting was the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall, a modern three-story building next to an auto repair shop.
Police spokesperson Holger Vehren said police were alerted to the shooting at around 9.15pm and were on the scene quickly.
He said after officers arrived and found people with apparent gunshot wounds on the ground floor, they heard a shot from an upper floor and found a fatally injured person upstairs who may have been a shooter.
Through the night, forensic investigators in protective white suits could be seen walking through the building continuing their work.
Student Laura Bauch, who lives nearby, said “there were about four periods of shooting,” German news agency dpa reported.
“There were always several shots in these periods, roughly at intervals of 20 seconds to a minute,” she added.
She said she looked out her window and saw a person running from the ground floor to the second floor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses hall.
Gregor Miesbach, who lives within sight of the building, told German television news agency NonstopNews that he heard at least 25 shots. After the police arrived, one last shot followed about five minutes later, he said.
His video, posted online by Bild newspaper, showed a person firing multiple shots into the building through a first floor window before the lights inside the room went out.
Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher tweeted that the news was “shocking” and offered his sympathy to the victims’ relatives.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church, founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York. It claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million, with about 170,000 in Germany.
Members are known for their evangelistic efforts that include knocking on doors and distributing literature in public squares.
The denomination’s distinctive practices include a refusal to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute a national flag or participate in secular government.
Germany has been shaken by a number of shootings in recent years, including a gunman with suspected far-right connections killing nine people, before killing himself and his mother, in Hanau in February 2020.
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