Austrian shooter posted online just before school massacre, media say
FILE PHOTO: A flower is seen on the fences of the school, following a deadly shooting at a secondary school, in Graz, Austria, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
Flowers and candles are seen in front of the fences of the school, following a deadly shooting at a secondary school, in Graz, Austria, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Emergency personnel stand in front of the site of a deadly shooting at a secondary school, in Graz, Austria, June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Borut Zivulovic
VIENNA - The 21-year-old man behind Austria's worst school shooting posted on social media from the building just before he shot dead 10 people then killed himself this week, Austrian newspapers reported on Friday.
Police described the Austrian as an introvert and an avid player of online shooting games who had largely withdrawn from the outside world before he carefully planned Tuesday's attack.
Newspapers Heute and Kronen Zeitung published details of a photo the young man apparently took inside a toilet cubicle with a timestamp minutes before police said the attack began in the school in Graz, a city in the southern state of Styria.
The photo was published on X, they said.
Kronen Zeitung said the man had an interest in the 1999 U.S. Columbine school massacre in Colorado carried out by two teenage shooters and that he apparently used a photo of one of the pair on his profile with his online gaming pseudonym.
Heute said the man had also published pictures of the pistol and the shotgun he would go on to use during the shooting on other social media.
A spokesman for police in Styria declined to confirm the reports or whether the man had social media accounts.
Police have been scouring the perpetrator's electronic devices, and said on Thursday that they had not discovered any video of the high school shooting on his mobile phone. REUTERS
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