AN ARMED woman who fatally shot a male nurse in the head at a German hospital yesterday probably also killed her estranged husband and the couple’s 5-year-old son at her apartment just before the rampage, police said.
Firefighters found the bodies of the man and child after responding to an explosion and fire in the 41-year-old woman’s legal practice in the southern city of Loerrach, local police said in an e-mailed statement. “It seems that this explosion was planned,” state prosecutor Dieter Inhofer said on ARD television yesterday. “We have evidence that a flammable substance was used.”
Three people, including a police officer at the hospital, were wounded by the suspected shooter, who used a .22 calibre handgun, police spokesman Eugen Wiessler said. Police fatally shot the woman during a firefight on the second floor of the city’s St Elisabeth’s Hospital, he said, bringing the total fatalities to that point to four. It was “very likely” the two victims in the apartment which the woman used as her law office were dead when the blast occurred, said Loerrach police spokesman Joachim Langanky.
Autopsies are under way to determine how they died, he added. The nurse was shot several times in the head and also suffered stab wounds, the police statement said. Police, who initially said the woman used a shotgun, did not identify her or the victims. She was seen running from her apartment building at about 6pm local time yesterday and then shooting in the street, wounding two male passersby, Mr Langanky said.
“All we know is that after the explosion, the woman was observed going into the hospital and spraying the place with gunfire,” Mr Inhofer said. “We don’t know yet why she went to the hospital.” The shooting spree is reminiscent of previous attacks that have prompted debate about the country’s weapons laws.
A school shooting in March last year in the town of Winnenden, about 20km (12 miles) northeast of Stuttgart, resulted in 16 deaths after a camouflage-clad teenage gunman entered the building and opened fire, killing nine students and three teachers. He killed three more people as he fled in a hijacked car before turning the gun on himself during a gunfight with police. – (Bloomberg)