18 Killed in German School Shooting

By JOCHEN WIESIGEL
.c The Associated Press

ERFURT, Germany (April 26) - An expelled student dressed in black and carrying two guns opened fire in his former school Friday, killing 17 people before fatally shooting himself as commandos closed in, police and witnesses said. It was one of the deadliest school shootings.

During the rampage, a handwritten sign reading ''HILFE'' - ''Help'' - was pasted to a fourth-floor window, and behind it a girl could be seen in the room. Police who later searched the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium - which had students from grades five through 12 - said they found bodies strewn in hallways, and even bathrooms.

''We found a horrible scene,'' police spokesman Manfred Etzel told N-TV television. Officials said the 19-year-old gunman killed two girls, 13 teachers, a school secretary and a policeman - one of the first to charge into the building after a janitor reported the shooting around 11 a.m.

The death toll matched that of the 1996 shooting at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, where 16 children, a teacher and the gunman died. Fifteen people, included two teen-age gunmen, died in the April 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

In Friday's rampage, the gunman opened fire with a handgun and pump-action gun, police said. Several weeks ago, the unidentified teen had been kicked out of the school in Erfurt, a city in the former communist eastern Germany.

''I heard shooting and thought it was a joke,'' said 13-year-old Melanie Steinbrueck, choking back tears. ''But then I saw a teacher dead in the hallway in front of Room 209 and a gunman in black carrying a weapon.''

Students flooded out of the school, which has a total of about 700 students and 53 teachers. But some 180 students were trapped inside. After the first burst of fire, shooting continued intermittently for about a half hour, until police commandos entered the building.

The gunman retreated to a classroom, where he shot himself as police closed in, Etzel said.

The remaining students were evacuated and, after searching the building, police discounted initial reports of a second gunman.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder led German politicians in expressing shock at the bloodshed. ''We are stunned in the face of this horrible crime,'' Schroeder told reporters. ''All explanations we could give right now don't go far enough.''

It was the second school shooting this year: In February, a 22-year-old German who recently lost his job killed two former bosses and his old high school's principal in a rampage outside Munich.

Interior Minister Otto Schily said it appeared the gunman was motivated by anger over his expulsion. It was unclear where the gunman got his weapons. Like most European countries, Germany has tight gun control laws. But there are millions of legal weapons in Germans' homes, registered for use in sport and hunting.

''Whether something like this could have been prevented is an open question,'' Schily said.

Erfurt, a city of 220,000 about 150 miles southwest of Berlin, has been economically struggling, though is better off than other cities in what used to be East Germany and is not known for crime. Erfurt, with a medieval castle in its old city, was for a time home to Protestant reformer Martin Luther in the early 16th century.

The 11-year-old Johann Gutenberg school - named after the inventor of the printing press and housed in a 1908 building - has a high academic reputation.

Shocked students described the gunman barging into a classroom.

''The guy was dressed all in black - gloves, cap, everything was black,'' said Juliane Blank, 13. ''He must have opened the door without being heard and forced his way into the classroom.''

''We ran out into the hallways. We just wanted to get out,'' she said.

Sixth-grader Martin Streng said he was in math class when he heard gunfire coming from a classroom down the hall. As he and other students filed into the hallway to flee the building, they saw a man with a gun down the corridor behind them, Streng said.

Outside the school, a police officer with a megaphone urged parents to register their children's names before leaving the scene. Groups of dazed and shocked students huddled in the street, hugging and crying. Ambulances and police cars massed in front of the school.

Schily, the interior minister, and other officials expressed concern that Germany may not have taken an increasingly aggressive climate in its schools seriously enough.

Teachers ''must confront the challenge of violence'' in society, said Ludwig Eckinger, head of a national association of teachers.

In what may be the deadliest mass killing at a school, a farmer angry about his tax bill set off dynamite at a school in Bath, Mich., on May 18, 1927, killing 43 people and then himself.

...but this is ridiculous. Don't get me started, but... I used to think TIGHT gun control was the answer. Now I am leaning toward arming everyone and having mandatory classes on gun usage and target practice, sheesh. At least then everyone would be able to defend themselves when something like this happened, and perhaps less people would get killed in the long run.

The way I see it, we're destined to never be the true global community I would love to see happen... witness the rise of society's dark side (all self-oriented, all escapism oriented)... it's like the main problem is not only too big to tackle, it's entirely too big to see clearly.
Everyone has a "solution..." but no one's would work without offending SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE.