16-year-old attacks students at Bavarian secondary school – two girls severely injured
A 16-year-old attacked several students at Gymnasium Welfen in Schongau, Bavaria. Two 13-year-old girls sustained severe stab wounds. The perpetrator was arrested.
16-year-old attacks students at Bavarian secondary school – two girls severely injured
At Gymnasium Welfen in Schongau, a town south-west of Munich in the Bavarian administrative district of Upper Bavaria, a 16-year-old student attacked several classmates on Wednesday afternoon. Two 13-year-old girls were severely injured with a knife. According to the current situation, neither is in a life-threatening condition.
Local police received an emergency call about the incident at around 12.50 p.m. Following this, 15 police units were deployed to the school grounds. A major police operation was initiated. Six rescue helicopters were deployed to treat and transport the injured, including a helicopter that took on the medical care and transport of the victims.
The suspected perpetrator, a 16-year-old youth, initially fled the scene. However, police officers located him shortly afterwards and took him into custody. Investigators are currently treating it as an attempted homicide. Further details about the background to the act are not yet available. It remains unclear whether the person arrested was himself a student at Gymnasium Welfen.
Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann expressed shock at the act. At the same time, he expressed relief that, according to current findings, there had been no deaths. Herrmann dismissed rumours that two perpetrators were involved. According to police information, it was a single attacker who was armed with a knife and a firearm. The German Press Agency (dpa) initially reported that no firearm could be seized, but ammunition was found in his car.
According to Herrmann, the suspect had required psychiatric treatment in the past. He is a Croatian national who has been living in Bavaria with his parents for some time.
The school had already received warning signals at the end of last year. According to the Kronen Zeitung, students at the secondary school received pornographic and violence-promoting content from a classmate via their school iPads in December. After informing a teacher about this, murder threats and an announcement of a school shooting in the school gymnasium followed. The school subsequently launched an internal investigation, though no further dangers to students were identified at the time. The school principal stated that the school's crisis plan had worked.
Police called on the public to avoid the area around the school. A contact point for relatives of students was set up in the local fire station shortly after the incident.
Source: 24ur