A gunman has killed six people at a child welfare centre in northern Germany, in an attack police have linked to a custody dispute over his three-month-old daughter.
The shooting took place on June 29 at a facility in Stade, a town of about 50,000 people around 50 kilometres west of Hamburg.
Four women and two men, all of them child welfare workers, were killed. Five died at the scene and a sixth died later in hospital.
The 45-year-old suspect had an appointment to discuss custody arrangements for his daughter, who was in the building with her mother at the time.
Neither the child nor the mother was hurt, said Kathrin Schuol, the police chief in nearby Lüneburg who is leading the investigation. She said the victims had been shot “in a brutal manner”.
Police said the man was born in Germany, had Turkish roots and lived near Hanover. He was known to officers for making threats in the past but had no record of violence.
The suspect did not hold a firearms licence and it remained unclear how he had obtained the weapon.
He tried to flee in a car driven by a woman described as a member of his family circle, but was stopped after a short chase. Police opened fire on the vehicle and arrested both occupants.
Two other people were being held on suspicion of involvement, though police did not give details.
The girl’s mother told officers she was no longer in a relationship with the suspect, and the child was taken into care.
Lower Saxony’s interior minister Daniela Behrens described the killings as “extremely cold-blooded” and said they appeared to stem from a custody dispute.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the news “deeply shocking”, while President Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered his condolences over an “appalling act of violence”.
Germany has some of Europe’s strictest gun laws, requiring anyone under 25 to pass a psychiatric test before applying for a licence. Mass shootings remain rare though not unknown.
In March 2023 a former Jehovah’s Witness shot dead six people at a congregation in Hamburg before killing himself. In February 2020 a right-wing extremist killed nine people in the city of Hanau.