Autopsy reveals Lörrach woman smothered son

TheLocal.de

September 21, 2010

Post-mortem results revealed on Tuesday that Sabine R. suffocated her five-year-old son with a plastic bag and that police halted her deadly rampage in Lörrach by shooting her 17 times.

The 41-year-old woman first knocked her son unconscious and then smothered him with the bag, police in the southwestern German town announced.

After she killed her ex-partner and son, and then apparently caused an explosion in their apartment, Sabine R. went to a nearby hospital where she murdered an orderly and seriously wounded a policeman. Other officers responding to emergency calls shot her 17 times, killing her, according to the autopsy.

The father of her child died from two gunshot wounds, one to the head and the other to the neck. Investigators told news agency DPA that both father and son were found lying side by side on a bed.

After leaving the apartment, the woman, a recreational shooter, went to the neighbouring St Elizabeth Hospital with a legally owned 22-calibre sports pistol and a knife.

There she shot a 56-year-old orderly three times in the head and neck and stabbed him in the upper body several times.

In total, 18 people were injured during the rampage, including those hurt in the explosion in the apartment building.

What precisely triggered Sabine R.’s rampage is still not clear, though some media have reported that she had argued with her ex-partner, possibly about custody of their son. Colleagues and people who knew her said Sabine R. had become increasingly distressed and embittered, the Badische Zeitung reported Tuesday.

Custody motive probed in Lörrach rampage

TheLocal.de

September 20, 2010

Police on Monday were investigating a possible child custody dispute as the motive behind a bloody rampage by a woman in the southwestern German town of Lörrach that left four people dead.

The authorities identified a 41-year-old lawyer as the woman thought to have first killed her ex-partner and their five-year-old son before heading to a nearby hospital armed with a pistol and a knife. After murdering an orderly and wounding a police officer, she was killed in shoot-out with the police.

The authorities said the woman likely went on the rampage following a relationship dispute. She apparently set off an explosion at an apartment building where her ex and their son lived in Lörrach, which lies in Baden-Württemberg near Germany's borders with France and Switzerland.

"It is suspected that relationship problems sparked this," Lörrach state prosecutor Dieter Inhofer said, adding that there was no outstanding legal proceedings between the two parents over custody of their son.

Autopsies on Monday revealed that she shot the man before the apartment was rocked by the blast. Her son was also dead beforehand, but the authorities could not say how he had been killed.

"The child has no gunshot wounds but there are signs of brute force. But the exact cause of death has yet to be determined in an autopsy," Uwe Schlosser, chief prosecutor from state capital Stuttgart, told the same press conference.

Fifteen others were injured in the explosion, which authorities believe was started with some kind of fuel after finding a canister.

After leaving the scene of the explosion, the woman then used a small-calibre pistol to shoot at two people. One was hit in the back, while the other suffered a grazing shot to the head.

She then headed to the Saint Elizabeth hospital in the city centre and entered the gynaecological ward. There she killed an orderly with a knife and shots to the head.

"We believe that it was a random encounter," a police spokesman said.

One police officer, who happened to be in the hospital as the woman began shooting, suffered serious injuries. The woman also attacked the officers arriving on the scene before she was shot and killed.

Wolf Hammann, head of Baden-Württemberg's state police, said on Monday that the entire incident had lasted 40 minutes from the explosion to the last shot fired.

"Thanks to their courageous intervention the police officers on duty kept it from being much worse," he said.

The authorities also said the woman had been a recreational shooter who had owned several weapons. They found over 100 rounds of ammunition at the hospital, news agency DPA reported.

Authorities in the sleepy town of 48,000-strong people near the Black Forest said it remained unclear why the woman went to the hospital, but pointed out that she had suffered a miscarriage there in 2004.

"We don't know if that's the reason. We can only report that this is part of the the woman's biography," said state prosecutor Inhofer.

The incident came only days after the trial opened in nearby Stuttgart last week against the father of Tim Kretschmer, the teenager who in March 2009 shot dead 15 people before killing himself at his old school and nearby.

Jörg Kretschmer, a 51-year-old businessman, is accused of having violated gun laws because his 17-year-old son was able to take his 9mm Beretta pistol from his bedside for the killing spree in the town of Winnenden.

Emergency services in Baden-Württemberg were well prepared thanks to events in Winnenden, and almost 400 members of the emergency services were in action on Sunday night, including 150 police and 120 from the fire brigade.

Many of those involved in the operation, as well as patients in the hospital, were receiving counselling on Monday.

The fire brigade evacuated seven people from the blazing apartment block and a further 12 from an adjacent building. In total, 17 people received with light injuries.

Four dead including child after woman goes on gun rampage in German hospital

By Allan Hall - DailyMail.co.uk

September 20, 2010

Four people are dead after a woman opened fire at a flat and then in a hospital in Germany last night before police shot her dead in a hail of bullets.

A child is among the victims at the St. Elisabeth Hospital in the town of Lörrach in Baden-Wuerttemberg - not far from the site of the Winnenden massacre in March last year when teenaged gunman Tim Kretschmer killed 15 people with his father’s handgun before taking his own life.

According to the local Badische Zeitung newspaper there was a 'loud explosion' around 6pm local time in a building opposite the hospital.

Photographs showed smoke pouring from the building as firemen raced to the scene.

But the fire brigade personnel were initially unable to tackle the blaze as they heard shots and took cover.

Two bodies - a woman and a child - were later found in the burned-out apartment and police said later they were certain the hospital shooter was responsible.

'We were playing with the children in the garden when there was a huge explosion that shook the house,' said Ayed Centinier, who lives in the apartment block next door.

There was no immediate explanation as to motive.

The female killer then moved through wards at the hospital, shooting at staff and patients with a sub-machine gun.

At least one police officer was hurt in the incident with a shot to the knee. At least one other person was seriously wounded by the woman.

She shot dead a male nurse before hitting the policeman, who was at the hospital on a private matter and not part of the response team. He was in critical condition last night.

It was as she opened fire on police who stormed the hospital after staff rang the emergency number that officers returned shots and she was killed.

There was no immediate indication about a motive, nor whether the woman was a patient at the hospital.

'We have dead and we have wounded but the situation is confused at present,' said a police spokesman.

The entire area around the hospital was cordoned off by armed police units in the minutes after the shooting started.

Lorrach, close to the Swiss border, is a city of 48,000 people twinned with Chester in the UK.

The 220 bed Catholic hospital has a centre for children, a specialist gynaecological unit and an intensive care station for premature babies as well as a psychiatric unit for troubled youngsters.