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Schools on alert after teenager's gun horror
Source: Agencies |
March 14, 2009, Saturday
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GERMAN police have received more than half a dozen threats of violence at schools since a teenager went on a deadly rampage in southwest Germany on Wednesday, officials said.
Authorities have been on alert since 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer grabbed a Beretta pistol from his father's bedroom and killed 15 people, including 12 at his former school, in the town of Winnenden near Stuttgart, before killing himself.
Yesterday, police closed a school in Ilsfeld, some 30 kilometers northwest of Winnenden, after finding a warning in an Internet chatroom that a shooting spree was planned there.
Teachers and pupils were kept out of the secondary school in the morning, but after searching the premises with sniffer dogs, police said nothing suspicious had been found.
In nearby Esslingen, a 20-year-old was arrested on Thursday after he threatened on the Internet to go on a rampage.
The same day, in the town of Wendlingen, police were alerted that a 15-year-old had written the words "shooting spree" with chalk in his schoolyard, and a school in southwestern Freiburg was briefly evacuated after a bomb threat, police said.
Officials said they had received more than half a dozen threats since Kretschmer's massacre on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Dutch police said an 18-year-old male had threatened to carry out a shooting at a southern Dutch school yesterday.
He was arrested and schools and child-care centers in the city of Breda were closed after the threat was made via the Internet, Dutch media reported. A police spokesman said the suspect told police it had been a joke.
German police said they still had no clear idea about Kretschmer's motives.
Kretschmer gunned down students at his former high school before fleeing on foot and by car, killing three more people, and eventually turning the Beretta on himself.
Investigators had said that Kretschmer posted his intentions in an Internet chat room only hours beforehand, but they now say they have serious doubts about the authenticity of the posting.
Police spokeswoman Brigitte Wahl said yesterday that investigators were working with officials in the United States, where the servers that host the German-language Website are located, but did not expect to clear up the mystery quickly.
Police said they were alerted to the purported Internet threat after the attack, and released a transcript of the chat at a news conference.
But later in the day, after the site itself claimed the posting was fraudulent, they searched Kretschmer's computer and found no trace of it in the computer's history, police spokesman Klaus Hinderer said yesterday.
Authorities have been on alert since 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer grabbed a Beretta pistol from his father's bedroom and killed 15 people, including 12 at his former school, in the town of Winnenden near Stuttgart, before killing himself.
Yesterday, police closed a school in Ilsfeld, some 30 kilometers northwest of Winnenden, after finding a warning in an Internet chatroom that a shooting spree was planned there.
Teachers and pupils were kept out of the secondary school in the morning, but after searching the premises with sniffer dogs, police said nothing suspicious had been found.
In nearby Esslingen, a 20-year-old was arrested on Thursday after he threatened on the Internet to go on a rampage.
The same day, in the town of Wendlingen, police were alerted that a 15-year-old had written the words "shooting spree" with chalk in his schoolyard, and a school in southwestern Freiburg was briefly evacuated after a bomb threat, police said.
Officials said they had received more than half a dozen threats since Kretschmer's massacre on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Dutch police said an 18-year-old male had threatened to carry out a shooting at a southern Dutch school yesterday.
He was arrested and schools and child-care centers in the city of Breda were closed after the threat was made via the Internet, Dutch media reported. A police spokesman said the suspect told police it had been a joke.
German police said they still had no clear idea about Kretschmer's motives.
Kretschmer gunned down students at his former high school before fleeing on foot and by car, killing three more people, and eventually turning the Beretta on himself.
Investigators had said that Kretschmer posted his intentions in an Internet chat room only hours beforehand, but they now say they have serious doubts about the authenticity of the posting.
Police spokeswoman Brigitte Wahl said yesterday that investigators were working with officials in the United States, where the servers that host the German-language Website are located, but did not expect to clear up the mystery quickly.
Police said they were alerted to the purported Internet threat after the attack, and released a transcript of the chat at a news conference.
But later in the day, after the site itself claimed the posting was fraudulent, they searched Kretschmer's computer and found no trace of it in the computer's history, police spokesman Klaus Hinderer said yesterday.
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