Germany: Anti-migrant xenophobic gunman kills 11 in horrifying spree, he and his mother then found dead
A gunman from the German town of Hanau went on a rampage there late last night and early this morning, killing 11 people. The Bild news server reports that he was allegedly motivated by radical right-wing political views and the disgust he felt toward migrants.
The alleged motivations are described in a letter the gunman wrote confessing to the crimes. The police are currently assessing those writings along with a video that they have found.
Authorities have not yet officially expressed their opinion of the possible motives of the perpetrator, who is also now deceased. According to the German media, the investigation of the crime has already been taken up by the Prosecutor General, which is in charge of investigating terrorism.
The gunman, according to Bild, was a Tobias R. who, in the letter that has been discovered, expressed many “confused opinions”, many of which are of a radical right-wing nature. According to reporting by the NDR and WDR television channels, as well as the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, racist and xenophobic motivations are apparent from the letter.
The 43-year-old wrote, for example, that it is necessary to combat certain groups in the population by killing them. According to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the gunman expressed negative views about migrants from Arab countries and Turkey in the letter.
Hatred toward immigrants is also apparent from the locations where he committed his attacks. His first target was the Midnight bar in the center of Hanau, in the Haumarkt neighborhood, where hookahs are on the menu.
The gunman first rang the doorbell and then began firing wildly into the hookah room. He killed five young people there, four men and one woman.
Bild reported that Kurdish people were among the victims. Next, according to Bild, the gunman fired his weapon at a non-stop fast food stand, 24/7 Kiosk, with a sign reading Arena Bar & Café.
There was also a car parked in front of the stand and its windshield was destroyed in the incident. Businesses of that type are customarily run by immigrants.
The gunman killed 11 people total, according to the most recent information, in the town of 100 000, which lies about 20 kilometers east of Frankfurt. Several hours after he committed these crimes, police found him dead in his apartment.
Another corpse was also found there. According to Holger Schmidt, an expert on terrorism for the ARD television channel, the other dead body was Tobias R.’s mother.
