A gunman who killed 10 people at his former school in the Austrian city of Graz was an “obsessive online first-person shooter”, according to police, who gave detailed information for the first time about how he had planned the attack.
The 21-year-old Austrian, who shot dead 10 people and then himself on Tuesday morning after going on a rampage at the school close to the city centre, had spent much of his free time playing what were described by police as “ego shooting” online video games, in which participants typically use virtual firearms to kill enemies.
Police said they believed the online community of players had formed his main social contacts and that he had otherwise been a loner who kept to himself.
It emerged that among the people killed by the man, identified by the Austrian and German media as Arthur A, was one of his former teachers. Police said it was unknown if he had deliberately targeted her.
The 59-year-old teacher was killed along with nine pupils – six female and three male – aged between 14 and 17. Nine people are still being treated in hospital for their injuries, including a male teacher, but all were stable and the last two in intensive care were to be moved out during the course of the day, health officials said.
It also emerged on Thursday in a report by the state broadcaster ORF, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for Austria’s military, that the killer had recently failed a psychological test to enter the armed forces.
However, he had even more recently passed the psychological checks required to be in possession of the weapons he used to carry out the killings, which he carried legally, police said.
The man, who had attended the school and dropped out three years ago, was an apprentice at an industrial school. He lived alone with his mother and was not previously known to police.
The shooting rampage, the worst in Austria’s history, has sparked an emotional debate over the state of the country’s gun laws, which critics have said are too lax.
During a visit to Graz on Wednesday evening, Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, said it was necessary for politicians to review the laws and to “look into how it is possible for a 21-year-old to own handguns and long weapons and have the opportunity to purchase the appropriate ammunition for them and to cause this mayhem”.
Austria’s national security council, set up in light of the 9/11 attacks in the US, was due to address the issue when it met on Thursday afternoon. Discussions have also begun about tightening security in schools, with some calling for the installation of metal detectors at school gates.
Michael Lohnegger, the head of the Styrian state criminal police office, said the man planned the attack in minute detail. He described how the man entered the main entrance of the BORG Dreierschützengasse school at 9.43am on Tuesday carrying a backpack containing his weapons and ammunition. Between 350 and 400 pupils were present on site at the time.
“He went into a toilet on the third floor and took various objects out of his rucksack. He put on a weapons belt with a hunting knife, a pair of shooting glasses and a headset, took out a Glock 19 pistol, a sawn-off Mercury shotgun and loaded the weapons.
“At 9.47 he proceeded to carry out a seven-minute rampage through the school, going from the third to the second floor, and opened fire randomly on people in the school, who were from the 5th class.
“He finally went to the third floor where pupils of the 7th class were … fired at the closed doors of the classrooms until he was able to open them and then randomly shot at the people he found there.”
He finally returned to the toilet cubicle on the third floor where he subsequently shot himself in the head at 10.07am, Lohnegger said.
Owing to the fact that the first team of armed police entered the school building at 10.06am and heard no shots, investigators are working on the assumption that Arthur A might well have planned to carry out more killings, as he had plenty more ammunition on his person, but his knowledge that police were in the building may have prompted him to stop.
There was no evidence that the killer knew the pupils he shot, Lohnegger added, but it had been established he had been taught by the teacher who was killed. There was no evidence that this was a motive behind the killing, he said.
Lohnegger said Arthur A had worked out a “very detailed plan of action. He had informed himself extremely precisely and given a lot of thought as to when he would approach each floor.” There was no information as to when he abandoned plans to deploy a homemade pipe bomb, found at his home, after it proved to be dysfunctional, although Lohnegger said it “in theory contained all the components necessary” to work.
Arthur A bought the shotgun in mid-April and the handgun several weeks later. He had been attending shooting practice at a range in Graz since March, Lohnegger said.
He said people at the school had reacted “very well” to the incident, after recent training in what to do in case of a shooting, by shutting doors and barricading themselves into classrooms.
Police said they had yet to rule out that the killer may have had an accomplice who helped him in his planning or in his execution of the attack.
Lohnegger described Arthur A as someone who lived a “very reserved” life and “was not very willing to participate in real life”.
A search of the flat where he lived with his mother in a suburb south of Graz had uncovered a suicide note “directed as an apology towards his family”.
The first details of some of the victims began emerging on Wednesday evening. A 15-year-old Bosnian-Austrian girl called Hana was one of the first to be killed, her family said. She had been preparing to give a lecture to her class.
Speaking on behalf of her Bosnian Muslim family, Sabahudin Hasić, a local imam, said they were “utterly destroyed, as is our whole community. This deed is completely unimaginable.” Hana had wanted to study medicine, he said, describing her as a “sunshine”.
In a post on social media, her father wrote: “My little mouse, may God give you paradise”.
Standing next to her in class had been Lea B, who was also killed. The 15-year-old’s family had come to Austria from Kosovo, and she was born in Austria. Sokol Haliti, the mayor of Viti, the family’s home town in Kosovo, told Austrian media that the community where her father was born and where her grandparents still live was in mourning.
“It is a terrible tragedy. Not only for Austria. Lea was also one of us,” he said.
