Assault ‘classic act by deranged man’

A woman cries at a makeshift memorial site near the Olympia shopping centre in Munich on Saturday. A shooting left nine people dead at the mall. (Photo: AP)

The teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was “obsessed” with mass killers like Norwegian right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the ISIS, the police said Saturday.

Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after 18-year-old David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday evening before turning the gun on himself.

Officials said Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness.

Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said the teenager had likely hacked a girl’s Facebook account and used it to lure victims to the McDonald’s outlet where he began his rampage.

“There is absolutely no link to the ISIS,” Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said, describing the assault as a “classic act by a deranged person”.

Investigators see an “obvious link” between Friday’s killings and Breivik’s massacre of 77 people in Norway exactly five years earlier, Andrae added.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first reaction to the carnage, said Munich had suffered a “night of horror”.

Most of the victims in Friday’s attack were young people, with three aged just 14, the police said.

Prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly had suffered depression, while media reports said he had undergone psychiatric treatment.

The teenager had 300 rounds of ammunition in a rucksack when he targeted the busy Olympia shopping mall, just minutes away from the flat he shared with his family, according to authorities.

Grieving Munich residents laid roses and lit candles in memory of the victims, with one placard bearing the simple plea: “Why ”

“Bloodbath in Munich,” was the headline on the best-selling Bild newspaper. Sixteen people were wounded in the attack, three of them critically.

An amateur video posted on social media appeared to show a man in black walking away from the McDonald’s restaurant while firing repeatedly with a handgun as people fled screaming.

A police patrol shot and wounded Sonboly but he escaped before police found his body, after an operation to track down what had initially been thought to be up to three attackers.

Neighbours said Sonboly was born to Iranian parents, a taxi driver father and a mother who worked at a department store. They lived in the well-heeled Maxvorstadt neighbourhood.