Munich gunman planned had been planning attack ‘for a year’

“We’re still working on the assumption that this isn’t a political motivated crime”, the State Prosecutor’s said of the attack, which began on Friday afternoon at a McDonald’s restaurant across the street from Olympia-Einkaufszentrum mall in Munich.

Further details were not immediately available, but Germany’s dpa news agency reported the 16-year-old boy had gone to police himself after the act.

Heimberger said the parents of the gunman remained in shock and were not able to be interviewed.

The killer, who has not been officially identified but is understood to be 18-year-old David Ali Sonboly, carried out the deadly attack with a 9mm Glock 17 pistol he had bought illegally on the internet, authorities said.

Sonboly was said to be a keen player of “first-person shooter” video games.

“The suspect had fears of contact with others” and also depression.

Following two horrifying school shootings in 2002 and 2009, German MPs passed stricter gun legislation that made it harder to legally obtain weapons.

Most of the dead were youths and all were Munich residents of varied ethnic backgrounds.

Hueseyin Bayri, who witnessed one boy’s death, told the Associated Press the shooter screamed a profanity about foreigners and said, “I will kill you all”, as he pulled the trigger.

After a brief altercation with police, the gunman turned his refurbished Glock 17 pistol on himself, firing a bullet into his head, Steinkraus-Koch said. Police said separately that the believed the weapon was illegal because its serial number had been scratched off.

None of the suspect’s schoolmates were among the victims of the shooting, the Bavarian Federal Criminal Office said.

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

Late Sunday police said they had taken in for questioning a friend of the shooter who might have known of the attack plan.

They also said the shooter appeared to have been the victim of bullying and had been receiving psychological treatment.

Police also found medication, but it was not clear whether he had been taking it. He had continued treatment as an outpatient after his release from hospital.

People mourn behind flowers near the Olympia shopping center where a shooting took place leaving nine people dead two days ago in Munich, Germany, Sunday, July 24, 2016.

The shooting spree sparked a terror alert, with Europe on edge following a string of attacks claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, but investigators have ruled out that Sonboly had any link with the jihadists.

“It is not the case that he deliberately selected” the people who he shot, he said.

“(He) said he would treat them to what they wanted as long as it wasn’t too expensive – that was the invitation”, Heimberger said.

Munich Police Chief Hubertus Andrä over the weekend also drew parallels between Sonboly’s shooting spree and the 2011 attack in Norway, when Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, mostly teenagers.

A squad of police commandos arrested him around 6.15pm at an apartment in the Munich neighbourhood of Laim.

It was the second incident targeting victims apparently at random in less than a week in Bavaria. He injured a further 16 people, including children.