Shooting in Munich/Germany

[Bernhard]

Hi all!

Recently I wanted to check back to this site to see what's going on. Didn't happen due to several time restraints, life and so on.

But with the shootings this night in my neighbouring city Munich (Bavaria/Germany) I just wanted to check in to say I'm fine.

22-JUL-2016, ~18:00 (local time, UTC+2): an armed man opened fire near a fast food restaurant in a shopping mall in Munich. In the following there were reports of a team of assassins and multiple attacks in the city, which couldn't be confirmed. Local police, EMS and fire department responded. Regional mutual support was asked for. Public transport in Munich was stopped.

22-JUL-2016, 18:29: First alarm for several units in our (neighbouring) county, including incident command, just for staging. I wasn't on duty, so just listened to the radio and our internal communication. Our crisis intervention team was called to assist in Munich directly.

22-JUL-2016, 20:20: My local volunteer disaster respond unit was called out into a staging area, I joined the team (2 vehicles, carrying up to 10 staff and material for ~25 patients including tent, stretchers and so on).

22-JUL-2016, ~22:00: A hostage situation at the Munich airport (MUC) was reported. My unit was part of the troop dispatched there. Soon after our arriving it was reported that the offender was arrested, two victims were transported. However, I can't confirm the actual situation beeing a real hostage threat or something else. If, it most probably was totally unrelated to the shooting in Munich. Police and EMS cleared the scene, my unit wasn't involved. After a while we were allowed to return into the original staging area.

22-JUL-2016, ~23:30: In the staging area we got information through regular TV news sources.

23-JUL-2016, ~00:45: We were released and returned back to our stations.

Now it's 03:00, I'm home and listening to local news reports. Official status is now: ~21 wounded (~3 life threatening and 13 minor wounded still in hospital treatment) + 10 death, including suspected individual (shot himself). Around 100 persons were psychologically counseled. Around 2300 police officers were activated. EMS/medical disaster response staff not yet counted, I think at least about 1000.

My subjective view: calm and professional response by police, EMS and fire - career and volunteer units. In short time a real lot of responders could be activated, including special law enforcement/counter terrorism units including other regions, federal units (GSG9) and even foreign teams (COBRA/Austria). EMS and medical disaster units were organized and responded well, locally and from other regions in Bavaria.

At the moment, Germany tests a disaster public information software for smartphones, Munich is one of the testing areas. Worked well, information was quick and instructive ("terrorsim alert, stay at home, close doors").

Munich police has a very professional social media unit on Twitter (@PolizeiMuenchen) and Facebook. This channels provided even more useful information by reliable sources.

Social media, though somewhat helpful, showed it's bad side, too. A lot of false reports, speculations and rumors were transmitted and created some information chaos.

However, established news media (papers/online papers, TV, radio) delivered good information and avoided too much sensationalism. Citizens stayed rather calm.

Public transport is activated again now.

Assassin was a 18 y/o Munich resident from German/Iran origin, shot himself near the shopping mall after beeing chased and shot at by police.

That's what I experienced myself and know from news reports and public police sources in this minute. Evaluation and investigations are in progress...

Stay safe out there!

 

Bernhard

@Moderation: there is no other international section apart from CAN/UK/AUS, so I'm putting this in the general section. Please feel free to put this where it fits better.

 

[paramedicmike]

Glad to hear you're safe, Bernhard.  Thanks for the update.

[Bernhard]

Update: "our" hostage situation at Munich airport was a more or less relationship problem between a man, his boss at an airport company and his wife involving a fake pistol. Totally unrelated to the Munich shooting, just happened at the same evening and seemed to fit in a large terrorism scheme. Wasn't.

The Munich shooting slowly turns out to be not terrorism related as well, instead the fatal "extended suicide" of a psychical sick person. However, police still investigates.

The incident was spooky, since reports came in from multiple shootings throughout Munich (just like in Paris last year), which indicated a coordinated terrorist attack. All false alarms, as it turned out, often triggered by social media reports. Or a totally unrelated incident like the amateur hostage situation my unit was dispatched to.

Some overly hysteric people have a platform there. And some wanna-be's use that: on youtube you find more "shooting in Munich" videos than really exist. Sometimes footage from the tragic 1972 terrorist attack on the Olympic games in Munich, where several israelic athletes were killed (which lead to the foundation of highly professional counter terrorism units in german police). Others just take some other shooting videos, even training videos and excercise documentation and turn them into "raw footage from Munich". Sick.

Generally, life in Munich or Germany as a whole is rather safe. Shootings or criminal deeds involving a weapon are rare, counted in lower tenths per year (whole Germany!). The vast majority of EMS/medics/doctors here will never see a gunshot wound their entire life, if not beeing from a suicidal deer hunter. However, police is prepared very well, as they showed yesterday night.

But we have our share of mentally instable persons as well. How the person now got a gun is part of the investigation, permit isn't easy to obtain (though possible). The single man attacking in a train last week in Würzburg (another city in Bavaria) used an axe - most probably just another young man (17 y/o) with mental problems, just happened to be a refugee from Afghanistan with probable severe psych trauma and an internet connection (still under investigation, there are signs he was a follower of IS/daesh but just in the sense of a sports team fan).

Mental problems, access to a sharp or loaded device, internet connection, news reports of brutality elsewhere and hot humid weather obviously are a bad mix.

Unfortunately this affects the political discussion concerning refugees in a critical way. Some seem to forget the fact, that those refugees fled from brutality and terrorism. But they are instrumentated (sp?) by politicians, some of those beeing mentally very suspicious themselves. Difficult situation...

By the way it seemed that the offender from yesterday made very clear, he's not a refugee, there exists an eye-witness video where he states in perfect german language with slightly bavarian accent "I'm a German!". We'll see.

Myself I'm impressed of the very good incident management by the police. They quickly activated massive forces and had a superb crisis communication on multiple channels, which helped keeping the situation on a rather calm level. Cooperation with EMS was totally proffessional, the danger prevention/response system here clearly worked throughout all emergency services.

[Bernhard]

Update: Identity of the assasin is now known, it was a 18 y/o school kid. Beside having iranian roots in the family there is no evidence of a radical islamic background. Police found a lot of literature about school shootings including scientific (psychological) books, apparently he was fascinated by school shootings, especially about the incident in Winnenden/Germany (in 2009 a former student entered the school and fired).

He was in psychiatric treatment for severe depression but probably had an additional drug addiction (which still is subject to investigation).

The pistol (reportedly a Glock) was obviously from illegal sources, since the serial number was removed. He carried several 100 rounds of ammunition in a knapsack.

Latest news articles report 27 surviving patients and 9 victims dead plus the assassin, who committed suicide after beeing chased by police. Initially, two plain clothes cops followed him and shot multiple rounds, which may have lead to the public assumption of facing three terrorists. There exists video material showing an civilist arguing with the assasin in crude language (where the assasin states "I'm German!" and beeing rised in a lower class part of town) and of shots fired at him from a distance with unclear impact (the assassin stumbles, then hides behind a structure, later police reports stated that he didn't receive a hit by law enforcement).

Other suspicions: the mass shooting in Norway has had it's fifth anniversary on this day, where a right-wing extremist detonated a bomb in Oslo and shot participants of a worker's party youth summer camp on the island of Utoya. As the assasin there the Munich gun man focused on young people (plus: with foreign appearance).

My subjective situation assessment as of now: a mentaly ill person commited an enhanced suicide and is fascinated enough from school and extremist shootings so he tried something similar. In those days now people tend to make an "terrorist" assumption soon, which obviously is not the background in this case.

My report ends here, I will leave the topic open for discussion, especially on EMS related questions (however, I didn't receive a report about EMS response, yet). Feel free to ask!

[ERDoc]

Glad to hear you are okay.  It's a crazy world out there lately.

[Bernhard]

Thanks! My original copy of Hill Street Blues is on LP, but no working record player here any more... Feeling old, will try youtube.

BTW and back on topic, on youtube several videos show the shooting. "Our" hostage situation didn't get much publicity (which is good), but was scary the first hour, though.

Those who like to watch a lot of emergency vehicles responding to a real incident may take a look here, somewhere in between my countie's crisis intervention team arrives (video shows ~41 minutes of police, EMS, fire and disaster response units arrving at Munich scene of shooting...looks a bit chaotic, but I'm confident they had a plan ):