Gunman Frees Last 2 Hostages
A teen-age gunman who took four youngsters hostage Friday at a school in southwestern Germany laid down his weapon and surrendered after letting all the hostages go unharmed, police said.
The six-hour standoff at the school in Waiblingen, 3 miles northeast of Stuttgart, ended at around 9:20 p.m. local time a police spokesman said.
The hostage-taker had told police by cell phone he wanted a million euros (US$) and a getaway car, police said, but any further motive for his actions wasn't clear.
After about five hours into the incident, he released two of the hostages, then let the other two go about an hour later.
About 100 students were in the Friedensschule, or Peace School, for afternoon lessons when a 16-year-old former student walked in and sat down in a second-floor computer room around 2:30 p.m. local time, witnesses and police said. Minutes later, he stood up and pulled out a handgun, they said.
Students said he warned them to remain calm and then gave a mobile phone number to a teacher. He made students close the curtain before sending the teacher and all but four students out of the room, then called police himself.
"He said, 'If you don't keep quiet something will happen,"' said Marc, an 11-year-old student.
Students said the gunman was able to enter unnoticed because it was fairly common for kids to sit down at unoccupied computers.
Police spokesman Thomas Keller described the hostage-taker as making "a calm impression" while talking with police. The hostages were all sixth-graders, around 12 years old, he said.
The incident comes six months after one of the world's worst school shootings in the eastern city of Erfurt, when a 19-year-old former student went on a rampage at the Gutenberg high school, killing 13 teachers, two students and a police officer before turning the gun on himself.
Germans were confronted with the specter of school violence on such a scale for the first time, and parliament took the step of passing a bill to tighten Germany's already strict gun laws, including raising the age for gun ownership. The Erfurt gunman, expelled student Robert Steinhaeuser, had licenses for both the pistol and pump-action shotgun that he used in the attack.
By Oliver Schmale