Shots were fired around 9 p.m. Thursday evening in this center, located in the Gross Borstel district, north of the city.
The facts took place in the district of Gross Borstel, north of the second largest city in Germany. Seven people were killed and others were seriously injured in a shootout on Thursday evening March 9 at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Hamburg, Germany, police said.
In a statement released Friday morning, the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses said “deeply saddened by the terrible slaughter perpetrated against its members in a Kingdom Hall in Hamburg after a religious service”. Franceinfo returns to what we know of this shooting.
Shots fired at a Jehovah’s Witness center
According to the daily Abendblatt burger*, Jehovah’s Witnesses had been meeting since 7 p.m. for a weekly Bible study meeting. The site of the community indeed shows a meeting organized on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the district of Gross Borstelin Hamburg. “Around 9 p.m. an assailant shot at participants of an event in a church in Deelböge Street”, where the Jehovah’s Witness community event was held from 7 p.m., Hamburg police said.
According to a police spokesperson, law enforcement “were called around 9:15 p.m. to report shots fired in the building” of three floors. A local police unit, working on special operations, was near the scene and was thus able to intervene a few minutes after the calls, according to the spokesperson, whose remarks were relayed by the public radio Deutsche Welle *.
A student living near the center where worshipers were gathered reported that she had heard “four rounds of shooting”. “During these periods, multiple shots were fired, approximately 20 seconds to one minute apart,” she said, quoted by the public media NDR *. Looking out the window, “I saw a person running frantically from the ground floor to the first floor” of the building, also confided the student. At around 10:30 p.m., residents of the neighborhood received an alert on their smartphones from a “life-threatening situation”. The roads around the scene of the shooting were blocked.
Several dead and injured
When the intervention forces entered “very quickly in the building”, they “found dead and seriously injured people there. according to the police spokesman. “All the people who died had gunshot wounds”. According to NDR, forensic pathologists intervened overnight from Thursday to Friday at the scene of the attack.
The shooting claimed seven victims, the police announced on Friday morning, in a first official quantified report. Some of the injured people are “seriously”, she clarified.
Alleged ‘shooter’ at this point
“On the base” information known at this stage, the police “Assumed” that the shots were fired by a single perpetrator, but “the investigation into the context of the act continues”, said local police on Twitter*. “In order to exclude the involvement of other perpetrators, we carry out extensive checks and searches.”
According to a spokesperson, the police, once there, heard a shot in the “the top part” of the building, then discovered the body of“a lifeless person”. It’s about “possibly” of the author of the shooting, according to this source, who adds that he did not have “of an indication of a fleeing assailant”. On Friday morning, police said “obviously”, the probable author of the shots was dead. The police therefore reported eight dead, seven victims and the alleged assailant.
The motive for the attack remains unknown at this stage. The police have launched an online portal, allowing witnesses to send the police possible images of the facts. A press conference on the circumstances of the attack and the progress of the investigation is due to take place on Friday at noon.
* These links refer to content in German.