German Shooting

WINNENDEN, Germany (AFP) – Flags flew at half mast acrossGermany on Thursday as the numbed nation mourned the 15 mainly female victims of a teenage gunman in a picturesque town.

Hundreds of candles were left outside the school in Winnenden where 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer picked off nine pupils and three teachers before killing three other people in the town. He then turned the gun on himself in a shootout with police.

Churches were packed for special services held late Wednesday and dozens of people held a vigil outside the school on what Chancellor Angela Merkel called "a day of mourning for all of Germany."

"Our thoughts go out to the families and the friends. We are thinking of you and we are praying for you," she added.

The front page of the local paper, the Winnender Zeitung, was just a blank black page on Thursday, except for a single word: "Why?"

The same question was being asked on the streets and in the churches of the town north of Stuttgart.

"There is more violence than there was 10 years ago," Heidi Loebe, a saleswoman told AFP. "I do not understand it. This is a boy who had finished his studies and begun a training course."

"We have perhaps all failed," one man, a tax advisor, said without giving his name. "The big question now is: Why did he do it?"

Police have given no motive for the slaughter. Eleven of his 12 victims at the school were female, and nearly all were expertly shot in the head.

However, Ralf Michelfelder, police chief in Waiblingen whose officers also cover Winnenden, said the "first indications" as to motive were emerging.

More details should be available at a news conference later in the day, he said.

Kretschmer went into one classroom three times, the Bild daily said. On the third visit he told the class: "Aren't you all dead yet?" A teacher threw herself in front of a female pupil -- and was shot by the gunman, Bild said.

Heribert Rech, interior minister of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg where the massacre took place, said there was nothing to indicate that the teenager held a grudge against the school.

After leaving last year, Kretschmer had enrolled on a course to train as a salesman. He regularly worked out at the gym and belonged to a sports club.

"He was completely unremarkable, there was nothing in his background to suggest this could have happened," the minister said. Fellow students described him as "quiet" and "reserved," even "friendly."

Kretschmer came from a prosperous family. His father is a successful businessman who employs 150 people, according to media reports. His parents and sister, still in shock, have been taken to a secret location, German television reported.

However, he found it difficult to fit in at school and had few friends. "He was simply not accepted by anyone and just sat all day in front of his computer," a school colleague identified at Mario told German television station N24.

Reports also say he was obsessed with computer shooting games -- especially the violent shoot-em-up Counterstrike -- and had become a crack shot. It appears most of his victims died from accurate shots to the head.

His father owned over a dozen guns, all locked away except the nine millimetre Beretta that caused the carnage. According to media reports, Kretschmer senior was "domineering" and a member of a local gun club, which his son also visited.

Rech said Kretschmer had "destroyed the soul of an entire school and ripped into the heart of a town."

The rampage ended in the car park of a shopping centre about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Winnenden.

Cornered in the car park, there was a shootout between the teenager and the police in which he was shot in the leg, Rech said.

"He fell down, got up again and reloaded his gun. He was found soon afterwards dead," Rech said. State police chief Erwin Hetger said it was believed he had turned the gun on himself.

The school remains cordoned off and will not open for the rest of the week. There have been calls for it to remain closed forever as a sign of respect.