Erfurt school shooting: Parents didn’t know son had been expelled

The parents of a teenage gunman who killed 16 people and himself at his former school did not know he had been expelled, German police have said.

As investigators developed a fuller picture of the 19-year-old behind one of the deadliest school shootings, they said Robert Steinhaeuser’s parents had no idea he had been kicked out of school for forging a doctor’s note - a humiliation that authorities believe triggered Friday’s rampage in Erfurt.

‘‘The parents thought he was going to school every day and was successfully moving toward his high school diploma,’’ Police Chief Rainer Grube said last night.

On the morning of the shooting rampage, he left home saying he was taking a maths exam that day.

Officials said the mother wished her son good luck as he left.

Police said he walked into the building just before 11am, used a bathroom to change into all-black clothing and a ski mask, then shot dead 13 teachers - more than a third of the faculty - two teenage students and a policeman.

Police said he fired about 40 rounds before turning his 9 mm Glock pistol on himself inside the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium.

Officers confiscated from his home comics and a number of computer games that featured ‘‘intensive weapons usage,’’ Grube said.

Mrs Steinhaeuser told police she had not noticed any unusual behaviour in her son, described by officials and acquaintances as a gun club member who had few, if any, close friends.

A quirk of Germany’s education system also may have contributed to the tragedy. Thuringia, where Erfurt is the state capital, is alone in denying even an intermediate diploma to students who go beyond 10th grade, but then fail twice to pass final exams.

Officials said Steinhaeuser had failed last year, and his expulsion a few weeks ago deprived him of the second - and last - chance for a full diploma, necessary to attend a university or get a decent job.

Crowds continued to gather at the school entrance yesterday. Flowers overflowed from the steps onto the footpath, and candles spluttered in the rain. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer became the latest national figure to pay his respects, placing a bouquet and consoling the tearful school principal as she told him about the horrific events.

Officials cancelled classes for at least a week and said students would receive counselling at Erfurt’s city hall.

Erfurt Mayor Manfred Ruge said after meeting the school’s parents, teachers and students today that they had resolved to clean up and reopen the building as soon as possible to ‘‘also seize the chance to make a new beginning’’.

Providing fresh evidence that Steinhaeuser was bent on killing teachers, police chief Grube said the witnesses recalled the gunman bursting into some classrooms but leaving if he saw no teachers.

The two teenage victims, a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, were killed when Steinhaeuser fired through a closed door, Grube said.

As debate grew over how to protect schools against violence and curb youths’ legal access to firearms, some politicians called for tighter controls over Germany’s estimated 20,000 rifle clubs.

Steinhaeuser was a member of an Erfurt shooting club and last October got a permit to buy weapons, police said.

Meanwhile, a history teacher gave a chilling account of how he cut short the killing spree when he confronted the startled gunman in the hallway, pushed him into a room and locked the door.

Rainer Heise, 60, said he doesn’t know why he survived while others were killed.

‘‘Perhaps he just liked me. Perhaps he didn’t think I was bad,’’ Heise said.

Grube said investigators are interviewing Heise and that there is ‘‘evidence to support his story.’’ He said police found the killer’s body in a storage room that was locked with the key on the outside of the door.