Public prosecutor

An unmarried 35-year-old marksman: This is Phillip F., the perpetrator of the shooting spree in Hamburg. While the police can now reconstruct the course of the crime, the motives of the man are still in the dark. But one person apparently noticed the fatal development of F.

A few hours after the violent death of eight people in Hamburg, the police and public prosecutor’s office gave an overview of the investigation results so far. The Hamburg police chief, Ralf Meyer, reported that in January there was an indication of the later perpetrator Philipp F. In it, an anonymous whistleblower described his concern that a threat was developing at F. and asked that the man’s gun ownership be checked.

It was speculated in the anonymous letter that F. could have developed a mental illness. However, this was not diagnosed because the later perpetrator did not consent to medical treatment. There was also talk of a particular anger at religious followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses and at the man’s former employer. According to Meyer, it has not yet been possible to identify the whistleblower.

The 35-year-old was found during an unannounced check in F.’s apartment in Hamburg-Altona and behaved cooperatively. According to Meyer, there were no “relevant complaints”. The gun, which F. has been allowed to own as a marksman since December 2022, was in the safe, as was the ammunition. There was only one projectile on the safe, for which F., who has lived and worked in Hamburg since 2014, was warned. He apologized and locked away the projectile.

According to the Hamburg authorities, there was no attempt at a psychological assessment of F. after this visit, but all the security inquiries that had already been made for the issue of the gun owner’s license were repeated again. There were also no indications of the large quantities of ammunition that were finally used in the killing spree. F. kept his gun license, pistol and ammunition. F. finally used the Heckler & Koch P30 semi-automatic pistol as a murder weapon last night.

Lots of ammo and will to kill

According to Thomas Radzuweit, the deputy head of the Hamburg state security service, the perpetrator used large quantities of ammunition in his killing spree. A total of nine empty magazines were found after the crime, he had two more “on his man” and twenty more in his backpack. When his apartment was searched on the night of the crime, 15 more magazines were found. Each magazine was filled with 15 rounds.

At the press conference, Hamburg’s Senator for the Interior, Andy Grote, was shocked by the shooting, which had never been seen before in Hamburg on “this scale”. According to operations manager Matthias Tresp, the first emergency calls from the Kingdom Hall in Groß Borstel and from neighbors were received at 9:04 p.m. by both the police and the fire brigade, a total of 47, and shots could be heard on many of them. The employees in the emergency call centers apparently had to overhear the murder of callers on the phone.

According to the results of the investigation so far, F. first shot a woman’s car in the parking lot in front of the building, she was injured. He then pointed the gun at a window through which he then entered the building, the door of which was locked. According to Tresp, the first forces were already on site at 9:08 p.m. Only a minute later, at 9:09 p.m., the emergency patrol was at the scene of the crime, which then also gained access to the building.

For a brief moment they faced F., who then fled to the first floor, where he killed himself. By that time he had already killed seven people, four men, two women and the unborn child of one of the women. None of the victims were related to him. Another eight people suffered gunshot wounds, some of them serious, four of them are still in mortal danger.

The big question of why

According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who expressly thanked the police for their intervention, there were a total of 36 people in the Kingdom Hall on Deelböge. Philipp F. was a former member of the Hamburg community of Jehovah’s Witnesses and left it voluntarily a year and a half ago, but obviously not for good, said the police, the public prosecutor’s office and the interior authority.

The fact that he ended up not murdering more people is thanks to the exemplary implementation of the operational concept for rampages. It was possible to push F. away from the victims and extremely narrow his room for manoeuvre. This probably saved the lives of other people, according to operations manager Tresp.

What ultimately drove F. to his killing spree is still the subject of the investigation, and the authorities rule out a terrorist motive for the unmarried man living alone. There is no evidence of a political background to the murders, and the existence of a second perpetrator, which was initially feared, was ruled out that night. The person who was worried about Philipp F. in January could perhaps provide answers.