Austrian police: Graz gunman was avid player of shooting video games
The gunman who opened fire in an Austrian school this week killing 10 people and taking his own life was an avid player of first-person shooter video games, police in the city of Graz reported on Thursday.
Michael Lohnegger, head of the criminal investigation office in the state of Styria, described the 21-year-old former pupil of the school as an introvert who lived a secluded life.
The evidence investigated thus far provided no indication of a motive, Lohnegger said.
The gunman had no close relations with the victims and only knew the teacher who was killed, he added.
During the seven-minute rampage on Tuesday, the man was armed with a Glock pistol, a double-barrelled shotgun with the stock sawn off and a hunting knife, according to the reports.
Graz is the capital of the south-eastern Austrian state of Styria.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Austria plans tougher gun laws after mass shooting at school
(Reuters) -The Austrian government plans to tighten national gun laws after enduring its worst school shooting, Chancellor Christian Stocker said in an interview broadcast on Saturday. Speaking to ORF radio, Stocker said officials aimed to set stricter eligibility rules for possession and purchase of arms after a 21-year-old Austrian man on Tuesday shot dead ten people at a high school in the city of Graz before killing himself. The planned measures would look at things such as age requirements and how to treat certain weapons, Stocker said in an excerpt of an interview due to air later in the day. The cabinet plans to agree the measures on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the chancellor's office said. The proposals include enhancing psychological expertise in schools, increasing police presence there, improving data exchange between authorities and tightening restrictions for individuals deemed to be a risk, newspaper Kronen Zeitung said. The spokesperson confirmed the details. Police described the shooter as an introvert and avid player of online shooting games who had largely withdrawn from the outside world before he planned the attack. Authorities have yet to establish what moved him to carry out the shooting.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
School killings leave stunned Austria and France searching for answers
Two shocking attacks within two hours of each other, in France and Austria, have left parents and governments reeling and at a loss how to protect school students from random, deadly violence. At about 08:15 on Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy from an ordinary family in Nogent, eastern France, drew out a kitchen knife during a school bag check and fatally stabbed a school assistant. Not long afterwards in south-east Austria, a 21-year-old who had dropped out of school three years earlier, walked into Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz at 09:43, and shot dead nine students and a teacher with a Glock 19 handgun and a sawn-off shotgun. In both countries there is a demand for solutions and for a greater focus on young people who resort to such violence. Austria has never seen a school attack on this scale, but the French stabbing took place during a government programme aimed at tackling the growth in knife crime. The Graz shooter, named by Austrian media as Arthur A, has been described by police as a very introverted person, who had retreated to the virtual world. His "great passion" was online first-person shooter games, and he had social contacts with other gamers over the internet, according to Michael Lohnegger, the criminal investigation chief in Styria, the state where it happened. A former student at the Dreierschützengasse school, Arthur A had failed to complete his studies. Arriving at the school, he put on a headset and shooting glasses, before going on a deadly seven-minute shooting spree. He then killed himself in a school bathroom. He owned the two guns legally, had passed a psychological test to own a licence and had several sessions of weapons training earlier this year at a Graz shooting club. This has sparked a big debate in Austria about whether its gun laws need to be tightened – and about the level of care available for troubled young people. It has emerged that the shooter was rejected from the country's compulsory military service in July 2021. Defence ministry spokesman Michael Bauer told the BBC that Arthur A was found to be "psychologically unfit" for service after he underwent tests. But he said Austria's legal system prevented the army from passing on the results of such tests. There are now calls for that law to be changed. Alex, the mother of a 17-year-old boy who survived the shooting, told the BBC that more should have been done to prevent people like Arthur A from dropping out of school in the first place. "We know… that when people shoot each other like this, it's mostly when they feel alone and drop out and be outside. And we don't know how to get them back in, into society, into the groups, into their peer groups," she said. "We, as grown-ups, have got the responsibility for that, and we have to take it now." President Alexander Van der Bellen raised the possibility of tightening Austria's gun laws, on a visit to Graz after the attack: "If we come to the conclusion that Austria's gun laws need to be changed to ensure greater safety, then we will do so." Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 people. Although there have been school shootings here before, they have been far smaller and involved far fewer casualties. The mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr, believes no private person should be able to have weapons at all. "Weapons licences are issued too quickly," she told Austria's ORF TV. "Only the police should carry weapons, not private individuals." What we know about Austria school shooting Graz in shock and grief after attack Armed gendarmes were present at the entrance to the Françoise Dolto middle school in Nogent, 100km (62 miles) east of Paris, when a teenager pulled out a 20cm kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Mélanie G, who was 31 and had a four-year-old son. The boy accused of carrying out the murder told police that he had been reprimanded on Friday by another school assistant for kissing his girlfriend. As a result he had a grudge against school assistants in general, and apparently had made up his mind to kill one. Schools were closed on Monday for a bank holiday, and Tuesday was his first day back. The state prosecutor's initial assessment was that the boy, called Quentin, came from a normal functioning family, and had no criminal or mental health record. However, the child also appeared detached and emotionless. Adept at violent video games, he showed a "fascination with death" and an "absence of reference-points relating to the value of human life". The Nogent attack does not fit the template of anti-social youth crime or gang violence seen in France until now. Nor is there any suggestion of indoctrination over social media. According to the prosecutor, the boy did little of that. He had been violent on two occasions against fellow pupils, and was suspended for a day each time. There is no family breakdown or deprivation and school officials described him as "sociable, a pretty good student, well-integrated into the life of the establishment". This year he had even been named the class "ambassador" on bullying. For all the calls for greater security at schools, this crime took place literally under the noses of armed gendarmes. As Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau put it, some crimes will happen no matter how many police you deploy. For more information on the boy's state of mind, we must wait for the full psychologist's report, and it may well be that there were signs missed, or there are family details we do not yet know about. On the face of it, he is perhaps more a middle-class loner, and his apparent normality suggests a crime triggered by internalised mental processes, rather than by peer-driven association or emulation. That is what strikes the chord in France. If an ordinary boy can turn out like this from watching too many violent videos, then who is next? Significantly, the French government had only just approved showing the British Netflix series Adolescence as an aid in schools. There are differences, of course. The boy arrested for the killing of a teenage girl in the TV series yields to evil "toxic male" influences on social media – but there is the same question of teenagers being made vulnerable by isolation online. Across the political spectrum, there are calls for action but little agreement on what should be the priority, nor hope that anything can make much difference. Before the killing, President Emmanuel Macron had angered the right by saying they were too obsessed with crime, and not sufficiently interested in other issues like the environment. The Nogent attack put him on the back foot, and he has repeated his pledge to ban social media to under 15-year-olds. But there are two difficulties. One is the practicality of the measure, which in theory is being dealt with by the EU but is succumbing to endless procrastination. The other is that, according to the prosecutor, the boy was not especially interested in social media. It was violent video games that were his thing. Prime Minister François Bayrou has said that sales of knives to under-15s will be banned. But the boy took his from home. Bayrou says airport-style metal-detectors should be tested at schools, but most heads are opposed. The populist right wants tougher sentences for teenagers carrying knives, and the exclusion of disruptive pupils from regular classes. But the boy in Nogent was not a problem child. About the only measure everyone says is needed is more provision of school doctors, nurses and psychologists in order to detect early signs of pupils going off the rails. That of course will require a lot of money, which is another thing France does not have a lot of.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
Officer shot 6 times by YSL gang members says he kept thinking ‘I'm not dying out here'
For the first time, an Atlanta police officer is talking with Channel 2 Action News about an attack where a gunman shot him six times. YSL criminal street gang member Christian Eppinger shot Officer David Rodgers six times in 2022 as he tried to arrest Eppinger for armed robbery. Rogers spoke one-on-one with Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne on Friday and walked him through the harrowing incident. 'I encountered Mr. Eppinger, gave him commands to get on the ground, let him know that he had paper. He failed to comply. I had issues getting my Taser, and at that point, he flanked me and I was shot,' Rogers said. Earlier this week, we obtained video of Eppinger firing at Rodgers. 'While I didn't know I was shot six times, I heard that sound quite a few times. Poom, poom, poom,' Rodgers said. 'You kind of feel the heat from the blood flowing out of you, and I went to go access my firearm and couldn't, and I remember turning towards him and all I could see was the white pants he had on and the muzzle of that Glock.' Rogers said that he thanks God for surviving the attack. 'I kind of talk to God for a little bit. Just kind of remember saying to myself, 'I'm not dying out here,'' Rogers said. 'I took a graze across the back of the head that cracked my skull. I think they told me I took four to the back of the shoulder, shattered my humerus. And then one to the back of my thigh, right around my hamstring.' Rodgers says he used to work for Georgia Power but was laid off. He told Winne that it was the power of God that led him to his calling: policework. RELATED STORIES: Final defendant in YSL case pleads guilty Case of mistaken identity ends with young mother killed in alleged Atlanta gang shooting Young Thug says 'he's too big for jail' as he talks about life after incarceration, new music 'I fell in love with the service. Love with the people,' Rodgers said. He said it's a miracle that he's even still alive today. 'I'm definitely a walking miracle. No doubt about it. Yeah, God gave me the gift of life in that situation, or more life. He definitely placed some angels around me throughout recovery. And he gave me these special gifts of peace. I've had peace,' Rodgers said. Rodgers credits Will Johnson, now a sergeant, who, Eppinger also shot at but didn't hit, for fast action applying a tourniquet at the scene and more. He said he got to Grady Memorial Hospital in the back of an undercover car led by a blue light escort. Rodgers said he was in the courtroom on Monday when Eppinger was sentenced for the attempted murder of Rodgers and Johnson, and a host of other crimes, to 40 years in prison and 25 years' probation. The prison time will run at the same time as a 45-year sentence from a probation revocation,who Eppinger was already serving. 'Outside of the bigger question of where's the justice, I think we have to pay particular attention to how we treat our protectors,' Rodgers said. Rodgers told Winne that more than he was angry for himself, he was upset for Johnson and other officers. 'It was maybe 30 to 40 officers within that courtroom that day. After the sentence came down, and you just look at the reactions on everyone's face, there was a lot of sadness. There's a lot a dejection. You saw tears, but you saw defeat,' Rodgers said. The judge overseeing the case told Winne that in crafting Eppinger's sentence in the YSL case, she considered the lengthy probation revocation Eppinger was already serving, was essentially already a punishment for the same crimes for which she sentenced him Monday. 'I want every member of the Atlanta Police Department to know this: I see your bravery. And I recognize it, and so do the citizens of this city,' Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. 'I would have rather they just put in a stipulation that he got a PhD while he had to sit down, just so he could experience something else other than what he's grew up in,' Rodgers said. Rodgers said the most important part of his entire story is thankfulness. He says he is grateful to God and for the people He put around him to be strong when he couldn't be. He said they include his family, Mayor Andre Dickens, former APD officer Lois Palzolo, Sgt. Will Johnson, Officer Stacy Booker, Sgt. Jamir Denson, former APD officer Thomas Crowder, Officer Claudia Rivers, Maj. Janice Sturdivant, Dr. Stephanie Thomas, Officer Jaz Rivera, Inv. Leon Delain, Lt. David Holleman, Lt. Tim Henninger, Chris Wigginton and Billy Shoemaker of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, Douglasville Police Sgt. Matt Underwood and his charity Hooked On Blue, Chad Wallace of Team Blue Line, Keegan Merritt from a state peer support program and local school teacher Ashley Guthrie. He says their support came in many forms—from daily phone calls to getting him out of the house before he could return to duty and much more. And he said he wants to thank countless Atlanta citizens for their prayers and well wishes.,
