Seven Dead In Shooting At A Jehovah’s Witnesses Center In Hamburg, Germany. Hey CNN That Is Called A Kingdom Hall. Looks like The Shooter Was Offed.

Greg Carr

2023-03-11 03:03:40 UTC

Post by notmyrealname carr
Seven dead in shooting at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Germany
Tara John
By Nadine Schmidt, Jessie Gretener, Tara John and Chris Lau, CNN
Updated 3:06 AM EST, Fri March 10, 2023
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Video shows police entering building where shooting takes place
00:33 - Source: CNN
CNN
—
Seven people were killed during a mass shooting on Thursday at a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in the German city of Hamburg in what the country’s leader denounced a “brutal act of violence.”
”Eight people are dead - including the alleged perpetrator,” Hamburg police said in their latest statement. “Other people were injured in the incident, some seriously.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany said in a statement: “The religious community is deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members at the Kingdom Hall in Hamburg after a religious service.”
The slayings in the northern German city occurred around 9 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) with police initially unsure how many shooters might be involved.
But later updates from the city’s police force suggested there was just one attacker, who may have died at the scene.
“At present, we believe there is one perpetrator,” Hamburg police said in their latest update on their Twitter account, hours after armed officers scoured the scene for evidence and suspects.
“All police measures in the vicinity are being successively discontinued. The investigation into the circumstances of the crime continues.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz led politicians in denouncing the murder spree in the northern German city.
“Several members of a Jehovah community fell victim to a brutal act of violence last night. My thoughts are with them and their loved ones,” he wrote on Twitter.
A police spokesperson earlier said that authorities were investigating whether the shooter was among the several people found dead at the scene.
After being called to the building, police saw dead and injured people on the bottom floor where an event was taking place, Hamburg police spokesman Holger Vehren told NTV.
Officers also heard a shot on the top floor of the building when they first entered it and found a dead person upstairs.
Police believe it may have been the shooter but said no further information could be given at this point, a spokesperson said.
Police secure the area following a deadly shooting in Hamburg on Thursday.
Police secure the area following a deadly shooting in Hamburg on Thursday.
NONSTOP NEWS/Reuters
Footage from the scene showed numerous armed police officers inside and around the Kingdom Hall while a helicopter flew overhead. A bomb disposal team was deployed at one point.
The streets around the place of worship have been cordoned off, and police earlier warned of “extreme danger” in the area, the spokesperson added.
Nearby residents have been urged to stay indoors.
Police officers in special equipment on duty in Hamburg.
Police officers in special equipment on duty in Hamburg.
Jonas Walzberg/picture alliance
There is “no confirmed information on the motive for the crime,” police said on Twitter as they urged people not to share any unconfirmed assumptions.
Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher expressed his “deepest sympathy” for the relatives of the victims, calling the reports of the incident “shocking” on Twitter.
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Hamburg
Messages of support came in from Hamburg’s religious communities.
“The news of this bloody crime in Hamburg-Alsterdorf is shocking and leaves me speechless… My deepest sympathy goes to the relatives of the victims,” Father Sascha-Philipp Geißler, a senior member of Hamburg’s Catholic diocese, said in a statement.
Shootings in Germany are not unheard of, though rarer than in the United States
In January 2022, at least one person was killed after man opened fire on students in a lecture hall at Heidelberg University in southwestern Germany.
In 2020, a mass shooting at two shisha bars in Hanau killed several people.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/europe/hamburg-germany-shooting-intl/index.html

The gunman who shot up a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg on Thursday night before killing himself had been flagged earlier to authorities as a possible threat, police revealed in a Friday news conference.

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German officials are still investigating the motive of the shooting, in which six people were killed and a woman 28 weeks pregnant suffered a stillbirth. An additional four people were seriously injured by the 35-year-old gunman, whom authorities identified only by his first name and the initial of his last name, as Philipp F.

While there were no indications of the gunman having connections to terrorist groups, local authorities did receive an anonymous message in January raising alarm about the man’s hatred of his former employer and religious groups, particularly the Jehovah’s Witnesses, of which he was a member until about 18 months ago.

Photos: The scene of a deadly shooting in Germany

The message led to questions about whether the man — who had legally purchased a semiautomatic handgun on a sports shooter license — was mentally fit to own a firearm. Investigators who subsequently checked the man’s home in February, however, did not find any evidence to justify revoking his license, police said Friday, while acknowledging those sent had not been trained to spot signs of mental illness.

Investigators stand outside a building used by Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg on Friday. (Steven Hutchings/AP)
Officials highlighted that a special police unit that arrived within minutes of the first emergency calls Thursday night, because it happened to be nearby, likely prevented far more deaths. About 50 people had gathered in the congregation Thursday night.

German officials said there were conflicting accounts of whether the gunman left the Jehovah’s Witnesses voluntarily in 2021 or whether he was expelled from the group. The U.S.-based faith group claims 8.7 million adherents worldwide in its congregations, known as Kingdom Halls, and about 170,500 members in Germany. The hall targeted Thursday night is located in a residential area in northern Hamburg, Germany’s second most populous city.

In a tweet, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — who until 2018 served as mayor of Hamburg — said the dead and injured had fallen “victim to a brutal act of violence last night. My thoughts are with them and their relatives.”

Condolences also poured in from abroad, including from French President Emmanuel Macron and the U.S. State Department, which said it strongly “condemns the senseless act of violence.”

The German Jehovah’s Witnesses group said in a statement that “our deepest sympathy goes to the families of the victims and the traumatized eyewitnesses. The local ministers are doing their best to support them in this difficult hour.”

In the Hamburg police news conference on Friday, local officials described how some victims appeared to have been shot while speaking to emergency dispatchers.

Investigators found nine empty magazines capable of holding 15 rounds each at the crime scene, while the gunman carried additional ammunition in his backpack. Officials said they could not assert with certainty whether the large number of magazines found at the scene and at the gunman’s home had been legally purchased.

The shooting comes as the German government is drafting a new law that would place tougher checks on firearm owners in the country. Despite relatively strict gun laws, Germany has a high per capita ratio of legally purchased firearms.

While mass killings are rare, there have been a number of high-profile incidents in recent years that raised questions over loopholes in safety checks, including a racially motivated attack in which nine people in two hookah bars were killed in February 2020. The attacker in that case had also been able to purchase his firearms legally, even though a subsequent investigation found evidence of a severe psychotic illness.

A police officer carries salt Friday in the aftermath of a deadly shooting at a Jehovah's Witness hall in the northern German city of Hamburg. (Fabian Bimmer/Reuters)
Authorities said the Hamburg gunman first started shooting outside the Jehovah’s Witness hall, injuring a woman who managed to flee in a car.

Gregor Miesbach told German television news agency NonstopNews that he heard over 25 shots and saw a person enter the building through a window, before opening fire inside.

A nearby resident, Lara Bauch, said she heard four rounds of gunfire. Within each round, shots were fired “at intervals of 20 seconds to a minute,” she told German news agency DPA.

Police found several people dead and others with gunshot wounds when they got to the building 9:09 p.m. local time — five minutes after the first emergency calls, Hamburg police said Friday.

After arriving at the hall, police heard one last gunshot from within the building and found a body when they followed the sound. Authorities suggested that their arrival forced the gunman to retreat and prevented further harm.

Footage from the scene initially led to suspicions that there may have been two shooters, prompting a large-scale manhunt in and around Hamburg, but authorities later said they believed the gunman acted alone.

The Jehovah's Witness building in the northern city of Hamburg on Friday after the shooting on Thursday night. (Markus Schreiber/AP)
Maham Javaid, Amar Nadhir and Kate Brady contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/10/hamburg-shooting-jehovahs-witness-germany/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F395a21f%2F640b76ecd8b4d1607549abc1%2F63895a5b69508848e2f7a6f3%2F11%2F72%2F640b76ecd8b4d1607549abc1&wp_cu=6e8ad92ed4b817452a6ab9dd3635e43c%7C397bc3f8-36f2-4a50-a826-ff7d6ed5c283

My condolences to the grieving. JEHOVAH Bless the dead. Comfort and healing for the wounded. I noticed in the comments section of the Wapo article ppl commenting on France and America offering condolences which I also found odd since all the victims are German citizens.