Man held after shooting 3 people dead in Germany

A 64-year-old man who allegedly shot and killed three people and seriously injured two others in the Bavarian district of Augsburg is in custody, German police said on Saturday, reported dpa.

The arrest warrant was issued and executed in the afternoon, according to the police.

The Augsburg police are investigating the murders.

The suspect allegedly shot two women aged 49 and 72 and a 52-year-old man in an apartment building in Langweid am Lech on Friday, according to the police.

Afterwards, he allegedly injured a 32-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man with a firearm in a nearby house. They were brought to hospital, but police say their lives are not in danger.

Initial findings suggest the crime came after a dispute between the neighbours.

The police said that the suspect was a sports marksman who owned several weapons and had a weapons permit.

Police seized several weapons in his car and in his flat after the crime on Friday evening.

The suspect fled in his car after the shootings but was caught shortly afterwards by the police. He did not resist arrest.

The police were called to the apartment building where the three people were killed just hours before the crime was committed. "When the police patrol arrived on the scene a short time later, the 64-year-old had already left," they said.

The "No Murder Weapons as Sporting Weapons" campaign issued a renewed call for a ban on lethal sporting weapons in view of the deaths. "The risk of lethal sporting weapons is not controllable," said the initiative's spokesperson, Roman Grafe, who called German gun laws too lax.

He noted the same weapons had been used in assassinations in Erfurt (2002), Winnenden (2009), Hanau (2020) and Hamburg (2023) and could in principle be easily acquired by any sport shooter.

Bavaria's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, rejected the demand, saying tigher controls were not currently under consideration.

He added that Germany already has one of the strictest gun laws in Europe. "The vast majority of crimes in which firearms are used are not committed with legal but with illegal weapons," Herrmann said.