A tipoff was received two months ago by the authorities in Hamburg about the gunman who went on to kill seven people including an unborn baby in a Jehovah’s Witness hall, but he had persuaded officials not to take away his gun.
An anonymous letter was received by the weapons control authority in January raising concerns about a man named by German police as Philipp F, 35, saying that he appeared angry with his former fellow church members, but officers had found no reason for concern when they visited him last month.
The man, identified by local media as Philipp Fusz, a freelance business consultant, went on to shoot dead four men and two women aged 33 to 60, all German nationals, as well as an unborn female baby whose mother survived, during a rampage that started at 9pm on Thursday.
Eight people were injured, four seriously, raising fears that the death toll will increase. Six of those are German citizens, one is from Uganda and the other from Ukraine. It is the first mass shooting in Hamburg.
Fusz, who had left the Jehovah’s Witness church 18 months ago, went on to kill himself with his weapon after members of a special forces unit stormed the hall and chased him up to the first storey of the three-storey pebbledashed building near the city centre.
“He is a former member of Jehovah’s Witness who left the community voluntarily about a year and a half ago but apparently not on good terms,” said Thomas Radszuweit, Hamburg’s head of state security.
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