According to police, a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg, Germany, killed eight people, including the perpetrator. Several other people were injured, some of them seriously.
The figure was provided by the police on their website. There was no word on a possible motive for the Thursday evening shooting in Germany’s second-largest city. Former Hamburg mayor and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the shooting a “brutal act of violence.”
During the night, police stated that they believe there was only one shooter, who may have been a person found dead in the building.
Investigators worked all night to gather evidence. As light snow fell outside the building on Friday morning, forensic investigators in protective white suits could still be seen. Officers marked evidence with yellow cones on the ground and windowsills.
Hamburg officials said a news conference would be held Friday afternoon to go over the details.
Jehovah’s Witnesses spokesman David Semonian said in an emailed statement early Friday that members “globally grieve for the victims of this traumatic event.”
“In the local area, congregation elders are providing pastoral care for those affected by the event,” he wrote. “We understand that the authorities are still looking into the specifics of this crime. We are grateful for the brave assistance provided by the police and emergency services.”
The shooting took place at the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a boxy three-story building next to an auto repair shop in the Gross Borstel district, a few kilometres (miles) from downtown Hamburg.
Police spokesman Holger Vehren said officers were called to the shooting around 9:15 p.m. and arrived quickly.
He claimed that after officers arrived and discovered people with obvious gunshot wounds on the ground floor, they heard a shot from an upper floor and discovered a fatally wounded person upstairs who may have been the shooter. He claimed that officers were not required to use their firearms.
According to the German news agency DPA, student Laura Bauch, who lives nearby, said there were four periods of shooting. “There were always several shots in these intervals, roughly 20 seconds to a minute,” she explained.
She claimed she saw a person running from the ground floor to the second floor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses hall when she looked out her window.
Gregor Miesbach, who lives nearby, was alerted by the sound of shots and captured footage of a figure entering the building through a window. Shots can then be heard coming from within. Later, the figure appears to emerge from the hall, appears in the courtyard, and then fires more shots inside.
Miesbach told NonstopNews, a German television news agency, that he heard at least 25 shots. He said that after the police arrived, one last shot was fired about five minutes later.
His video showed someone firing several shots into the building through a first-floor window before the lights went out.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of an international church that was founded in the nineteenth century in the United States and is headquartered in Warwick, New York. It claims 8.7 million members worldwide, with approximately 170,000 in Germany.
Members are well-known for their evangelistic efforts, which include door-knocking and literature distribution in public squares. One of the denomination’s distinguishing practices is its refusal to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute a national flag, or participate in secular government.
