The teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was "obsessed" with mass killers like Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group, police said Saturday. Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after 18-year-old David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday evening before turning the gun on himself.
Officials said Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the teenager had likely hacked a girl's Facebook account and used it to lure victims to the McDonald's outlet where he began his rampage. "There is absolutely no link to the Islamic State," Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said, describing the assault as a "classic act by a deranged person".
Investigators see an "obvious link" between Friday's killings and Breivik's massacre of 77 people in Norway exactly five years earlier, Andrae added. Prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly had suffered depression, while media reports said he had undergone psychiatric treatment. The teenager had 300 rounds of ammunition in a rucksack when he targeted the busy Olympia shopping mall.