7 – Winnenden, Germany
America certainly does not have a monopoly on school shootings – as we saw at Dunkirk – or on students getting hold of firearms. While the ease of access to guns is something that many Europeans find baffling, there are examples all over the continent of adolescents going on the rampage, which have often produced many of the same arguments that followed massacres in the United States. What drove these children to kill? What media were they consuming that inspired them? How were their problems not picked up on by their parents and teachers? All of these questions were asked after the Winnenden school shooting in Germany in 2009.
Winnenden is a small town in Baden-Württemberg, close to Stuttgart and a short distance from the border with France. It is home to around 28,000 people and had been of little interest prior to the events of March 11, 2009, when tragedy struck. The attacker was Tim Kretschmer, a 17-year-old former student who had left the Albertville-Realschule the year before, but would re-enter at half past 9 in the morning on that spring day with the intention of causing as much havoc as possible.
He knew the layout of the school well and headed for an upstairs classroom carrying a Beretta pistol that he had stolen from his parents. He shot five students in the first classroom, then moved onto another, where he killed four more. When he left to reload, a teacher barricaded the door. Kretschmer tried to shoot it open, but when that failed, he went into a chemistry room and killed a different teacher. The alarm had been raised and students began to flee, some leaping from windows, with police arriving on the scene within five minutes. They exchanged fire with Kretschmer, who killed another two teachers as they ran through a hallway, before escaping and killing a man outside.
He jacked a car and fled, forcing a man to drive him over 25 miles to the town of Wendlingen. As they sped through southern Germany, Kretschmer if he thought that they would come across another school. The hostage driver eventually pulled over when he saw a police car and made his escape. The gunman ran into a car showroom, killing an employee and a customer, before engaging in a shootout with police. Eventually, after he had been shot in both legs by officers, Kretschmer barricaded himself in the showroom before turning the gun on himself. He had killed 15 people in total and injured 9 more.
Attention immediately turned to Kretschmer’s mental state. He was a fan of airsoft guns and of Counter-Strike, a video game, while he was also found to have an interest in dominatrix-themed videos. He had been treated for depression and had told a psychiatrist about his anger problems, though nothing had been done. His father was indicted by a German court for inappropriately storing his guns, as he had left the Beretta out of the gun safe. Kretschmer’s father was an avid marksman and a member of a local club, but was given a suspended sentence of 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Germany immediately tightened gun regulations, introducing a handgun registry, raising the age limit on gun ownership and implementing random testing of home gun storage.