Austrian neighbours of school gunman recall withdrawn young man

Irish Times

3 days ago

Neighbours and officials painted the picture of a withdrawn young man who attracted little attention before he achieved international notoriety by
shooting dead 10 people at his former school
and taking his own life in the Austrian city of Graz.
Authorities have so far given no details about the 21-year-old who media have referred to as Arthur A, other than that he was Austrian and failed to complete his studies at the Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz.
In the commuter town of Kalsdorf bei Graz about 15km from Graz where he lived, residents on his estate of neat, grey three-floor apartment buildings with dashes of orange were stunned to learn the quiet neighbour was behind Austria's first mass school shooting.
'He was totally inconspicuous. He didn't attract any negative attention, nor did he integrate into our community in any way,' said Manfred Komericky, mayor of the town near Graz airport and home to about 10,000 people.
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The family's letterbox had been taped over by Wednesday afternoon, any trace of their name no longer apparent. Of more than a dozen residents approached, few wanted to speak. Some said they had seen the man. None said they knew him.
Neighbours said the suspect lived with his mother in a ground floor apartment at one end of the estate with leafy gardens, over which a large concrete grain silo looms. Planes taking off from the airport can be seen in the distance.
Komericky said Kalsdorf had about 40 clubs and associations but that the young man had never been noticed at them.
The apartment building where the suspect lived. Photograph: Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images
Austrian newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Heute published pictures of a slight youth with a long fringe they described as the alleged perpetrator, one of which showed him holding a cat.
According to Heute, investigators said he did not have a personal profile on social media. Police declined to comment.
Details of his life after he left school were scarce. Heute said he struggled to find work. Police found a non-functional pipe bomb and a discarded plan for a bomb attack at his home.
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Thomas Gasser (38), a supermarket manager who lived in the building opposite the suspect for years, described him as small and generally decked out in a cap and headphones, covered up.
Contact with the family was minimal, Gasser said.
'It's just that we hardly ever saw them,' he said.
Officials said the suspect opened fire on pupils and staff at the school with a pistol and shotgun before taking his own life in a toilet in the building. Austrian media reported that he felt bullied, though police have not confirmed this.
Police said the suspect left a farewell note and a video message before he entered the school grounds.
Citing investigators, Kronen Zeitung said the man asked forgiveness from his mother in the video while thanking her for looking after him.
The victims were commemorated with a minute's silence at 10am. Churches rang funeral bells, including St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where about 900 public transport vehicles halted for a minute.
The incident was hard to take in, said a religious studies teacher at the school, Paul Nitsche, who left his classroom before the gunman tried to enter, and briefly saw him trying to shoot the lock off another door.
'This is something I couldn't even imagine before,' he told ORF. 'That's what the situation was like as I ran down the stairwell. I thought to myself: 'This wasn't real.''
The massacre on Tuesday was the bloodiest episode in the postwar history of Graz, and eclipsed a previous nadir: the 2015 killing of three people and injuring of many more by a man who drove his vehicle into a crowded Graz shopping street.
The news that the school shooting suspect lived in Kalsdorf was an unwelcome reminder of those days; the driver in the vehicle attack also lived in the same Graz suburb, residents said. Contemporaneous media reports confirm this. – Reuters