HAMBURG, Germany—German authorities say the suspect in a mass shooting in Hamburg was a former Jehovah's Witness.
Seven individuals, including an unborn baby, were slain inside the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Eight persons were injured, four of them were badly.
According to Hamburg security officer Thomas Radszuweit, the individual was a 35-year-old German national known only as Philipp F. in accordance with German privacy laws. He stated that the accused gunman was unknown to Hamburg officials and that no previous case had been filed against him.
He stated that it is not yet feasible to determine why the individual went on a shooting spree, but there is no evidence of a political purpose.
According to police, the criminal shot himself inside the Jehovah's Witnesses hall when policemen pushed their way inside.
According to Hamburg police head Ralf Martin Meyer, the suspect possessed a firearms license and legitimately owned a semi-automatic handgun.
There was no information on a probable reason for the incident, which startled Germany's second-largest city on Thursday night. Former Hamburg mayor and Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it a "brutal act of aggression."
Christiane Hoffmann, a Police spokesman, described the incident as a "shooting rampage" rather than a terrorist assault.
Authorities had previously stated that they thought there was just one shooter and that he or she was among the deceased.
According to witnesses and officials, officers arrived at the hall while the attack was still going on—and heard one more shot after they arrived. According to a police official, they did not use their own rifles.
Horst Niens, the leader of Germany's GdP police union in Hamburg, stated that the quick arrival of a special operations team "distracted the attacker and may have spared other casualties."
When asked about a possible political reaction to the shooting, Maximilian Kall, a spokeswoman for Germany's Interior Ministry, said it was vital to wait for the outcome of the investigations before forming judgments.
On Friday morning, forensic investigators in protective white suits were visible outside the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a boxy, three-story structure adjacent to an auto repair shop a few kilometers (miles) from downtown Hamburg. Officers marked evidence with yellow cones on the ground and windowsills while light snow fell.
Jehovah's Witnesses are members of a multinational church that was created in the nineteenth century in the United States and is based in Warwick, New York. It claims 8.7 million members globally, with around 170,000 in Germany.
