The Ansbach school attack occurred on 17 September 2009 at the Gymnasium Carolinum, a secondary school in Ansbach, a town of some 40,000 inhabitants in Bavaria, Germany. The attacker was armed with Molotov cocktails and an axe. Fifteen people were injured in the attack, two of them severely. The attacker was also injured. Police arrived on the scene shortly after the attack began, shot the attacker, and took him into custody.
Attack details
The attacker entered the school building around 08:30, armed with an axe, two knives and three Molotov cocktails. He hurled one of the incendiary devices into an eleventh-grade classroom, attacked a fleeing student with the axe, then threw another Molotov cocktail into a ninth-grade classroom across the hall. The student who had been attacked with an axe sustained a life-threatening concussion, another student incurred severe burns, and eleven other students as well as two teachers were lightly injured. At 08:35, an 18-year-old student notified the police, who arrived a short time later. The 18-year-old, who had been active for several years in the volunteer fire department, then began working to extinguish the fire. At this point, the attacker had locked himself in a bathroom stall. As he left the stall, he threatened the police officers with a knife. The police opened fire at 08:43, severely injuring the attacker with three shots to his arm, abdomen, and chest.
Background
The attacker, whom police later identified as Georg R., was 18 years old at the time of the attack and was himself a student at Carolinum. He had been undergoing psychotherapy for some time prior. He had been planning the attack intensively for months and had prepared a will. He had a date picked for the attack since the beginning of June 2009, but due to last-minute technical difficulties in preparing the Molotov cocktails he postponed the attack by a day. The police investigation later revealed that the attacker had felt unfairly treated, excluded, and unrespected; that he had been worried about passing the Abitur ; and that he had wished he had a girlfriend. He did not want to live anymore and had planned to be killed in the attack, and he had wanted to kill as many students and teachers as possible at the same time. No violent computer games, violent videos, or firearms were found at the attacker's home. While after previous attacks the public debate revolved mainly around changes to gun laws or laws for the protection of youth, the debate following this attack was confined to the problem of school bullying.
