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‘I’ve killed five people’: Shooting suspect arrested near Innsbruck

A man has been arrested in the Austrian resort town of Kitzbuehel on Sunday after the shooting deaths of five people.

Published: 6 October 2019 16:05 CEST
'I've killed five people': Shooting suspect arrested near Innsbruck
Photo: ZOOM.TIROL / APA / AFP

The man turned himself into police directly after the killings, telling police officers “I have killed five people”. 

The victims are believed to be the man's ex-girlfriend (19), new boyfriend (25), her brother (25), mother (51) and father (59). 

READ: Man held after home-made bomb leaves ex-wife with serious burns

Police told Austrian media that there had been a dispute between the man and his new girlfriend at a local restaurant the previous evening, with the relationship between having ended two months ago. 

The man approached the family home at 4am on Sunday morning – where he had previously lived with the woman and her family – before being told by the victim's father that the relationship was over, before being told to leave the house. 

He is reported to have driven home and taken a gun from his brother, before returning to the house at approximately 6am, entering the house by breaking a window. 

He climbed a balcony to reach his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, who were sleeping in a locked apartment inside the house.

Police said that the crime appears to be motivated by jealousy at the “end of a love affair”, also telling local media that the weapon was licensed and kept in a locked safe. 

Kitzbuehel Mayor Klaus Winkler said that it was a dark day for the holiday town. 

“There has never been such an event in this form (in Kitzbuehel). It is a tragedy and we are all deeply shocked,” he said. 

“This was a completely irrational act… a terrible family tragedy”. 

 

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TERRORISM

Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter’s home

Investigators seized electronic devices at the home of a young Austrian who fired shots near Israel's Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Islamic State group propaganda material, authorities said Friday.

Published: 7 September 2024 09:02 CEST
Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter's home

German police shot dead the 18-year-old man on Thursday when he fired a vintage rifle at them near the diplomatic building.

They said they were treating it as a “terrorist attack”, apparently timed to coincide with the anniversary of the killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Authorities raided the gunman’s home in the Salzburg region, seizing electronic data carriers, Austria’s top security chief Franz Ruf told a press conference in Vienna on Friday.

READ ALSO: Munich Israeli consulate gunman was ‘Austrian national known to authorities’

During the raid, “no weapons or IS propaganda” material were found, Ruf added.

Despite being subject to a ban on owning and carrying weapons, the man managed to purchase a vintage carbine rifle fitted with a bayonet with around “fifty rounds of ammunition” for 400 euros ($445) the day before the attack, Ruf said.

He opened fire at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) near the Israeli consulate, sparking a mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich.

At a separate press conference in Munich, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said investigators were combing through the gunman’s electronic data but had yet to find conclusive evidence of his motive.

But the “working hypothesis” was that “the perpetrator acted out of Islamist or anti-Semitic motivation”, she told reporters.

Austrian police said on Thursday that the gunman, who had Bosnian roots, had previously been investigated on suspicion of links to terrorism.

Investigators last year found three videos he had recorded in 2021, showing scenes from a computer game “with Islamist content”, prosecutors said in a statement.

In one of them the suspect had used an avatar with a flag of the “al-Nusra Front”, a jihadist group active in Syria, said Ruf.

But the investigation was dropped in 2023 as there were no indications that he was active in “radical” circles, prosecutors said.

“The mere playing of a computer game or the re-enactment of violent Islamist scenes was not sufficient to prove intent to commit the offence,” they added.

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