WINNENDEN, Germany — German police said Thursday they now doubt whether a chat-room post attributed to a teenager who went on a shooting rampage is real.
Police spokesman Klaus Hinderer said authorities are looking into whether the Internet postings were faked. Hinderer contradicted his earlier announcement that authorities were “completely convinced of the veracity of the post.”
The post appeared in a chat room about six hours before the shooter, Tim Kretschmer, 17, went on a rampage Wednesday at his former high school and killed 15 people in and around the German town of Winnenden. The message read: “You will hear from me tomorrow, remember the name of a place called Winnenden.”
Kretschmer allegedly also wrote that he was “sick of this life” and planned to storm the school the next day “and really toast them,” Baden Wuerttemburg state Interior Minister Heribert Rech told reporters Thursday.
“Everyone laughs at me, nobody recognizes my potential,” Kretschmer purportedly wrote in the German-language chat with a teen in the neighboring state of Bavaria. The Bavarian teen told his father and then police about the chat when he realized the threat had been real.
But Hinderer later said a search of Kretsch mer’s computer had shown no trace of his having made the chat-room posting. Prosecutors said they had taken steps to contact the U.S.-based provider of the site.
Across Germany on Thursday, government buildings lowered their flags to half staff, and schools held moments of silence for the victims. Germany’s national soccer league, the Bundes liga, said players would wear black armbands in upcoming games.
In Winnenden, hundreds of people filled a church for a prayer service. A crowd of many more watched on a video screen outside as a message of condolence from the pope was read.
Outside the school, students and residents lit candles and laid tulips, roses, handwritten notes and stuffed animals in a memorial.
Eight girls, three female teachers and a boy were shot in the school. Three men were killed as Kretschmer fled police.
Authorities and friends said that although Kretschmer played table tennis and lifted weights, his main hobbies appeared to be shooting and spending hours on his computer — where investigators said they found pornographic films, violent computer games, and a collection of horror and action films. Kretschmer’s father was a well-off businessman who legally owned 15 weapons and belonged to a gun club where his son regularly turned up for target practice, Rech said.
The teen, who graduated from high school with average grades in 2008, underwent treatment for depression at a psychiatric clinic last year, said investigator Siegfried Mahler. Afterward, he was prescribed a session of outpatient therapy, which he never began, Mahler said. Kretschmer was studying sales at a vocational school.
