“The juvenile entered the classroom and intentionally approached a classmate of the same age who was seated there and fired at least one shot at him from a handgun. His classmate suffered serious injuries,” Frankfurter Rundschau wrote on its website.
Emergency responders arrived on the scene shortly after noon, minutes after receiving reports of the shooting. The badly wounded boy was taken to the hospital, but his life could not be saved.
According to the German media, the shooter was apparently detained by someone present before the arrival of the first police officers, of whom approximately three hundred eventually arrived at the scene.
“The suspect will be brought before the competent investigating judge today at the request of the Offenburg public prosecutor’s office for the issuance of an arrest warrant for murder,” Frankfurter Rundschau quoted a statement from the prosecutor’s office there.
The school was temporarily closed, with around 180 students initially having to stay in classrooms for safety reasons, but were later escorted out of the school, Bild newspaper’s website said. He added that the students were given the care of psychologists before their parents could pick them up.
According to Bild, the Waldbašská school, where the incident took place, is specially designed for children with learning disabilities.
More attacks in classrooms
Already on Wednesday, the police intervened at one of the schools in the northern German city of Hamburg due to a reported pair of armed youths aged 12 and 13 who allegedly threatened a teacher. Police later arrested a total of five boys aged between 11 and 14 and confiscated three toy guns from them.
Germany experienced two school attacks this year on August 23, when a young man armed with a knife seriously injured an eight-year-old boy in the eastern German town of Bischofswerda, and a classmate stabbed a 13-year-old boy in Harsewinkel in the west of the country. In March 2009, a 17-year-old student shot dead 15 people and himself at a school in Winnenden, West Germany.
The police intervened in a school in Hamburg, armed students threatened the teacher
