A seventh person was wounded and reported in a stable condition.<\/p>\n
The suspected gunman tried to flee in a car driven by a 65-year-old woman \u2013 believed to have \u201ca close connection to the gunman\u2019s family\u201d \u2013 but was captured after a short chase, Schuol said.<\/p>\n
Police opened fire on the car but neither the suspected gunman nor the driver were hurt, she added. Both are being held in police custody.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called news of the shooting \u201cdeeply shocking\u201d, adding: \u201cMany people who were trying to help and protect others have lost their lives or been injured. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
The suspect was previously known to police \u2013 including for making threats \u2013 but Schuol said: \u201cHe has not previously been regarded as a particularly violent individual.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that the suspect did not have a firearms licence and it was unclear how he obtained the weapon.<\/p>\n
Police said the man was a Turkish citizen but was born in Germany.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s mother told police after the shooting that she was no longer in a relationship with the suspect. Schuol said the young child had been placed in care as police questioned the mother and investigated the case.<\/p>\n
Schuol said the shelter in Stade was run by a private provider but offered services to clients, including the child welfare agency in Hanover.<\/p>\n
Lower Saxony\u2019s interior minister, Daniela Behrens, described the killings as \u201cextremely cold-blooded\u201d and said that the \u201csuffering that the perpetrator has caused here in Stade is difficult to comprehend and, I believe, even harder to put into words\u201d.<\/p>\n
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered his condolences to the victims of the \u201cappalling act of violence\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am deeply shocked by the scale of the violence in a place that is meant to offer safety. My thoughts are with the families of those who have died and those who have been injured, who are having to endure so much pain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Germany has some of Europe\u2019s strictest gun laws \u2013 they require anyone under 25 to pass a psychiatric exam before applying for a gun licence \u2013 but but mass shootings still occur.<\/p>\n
In February 2020, a far-right extremist shot dead nine people and wounded five others in the central German city of Hanau.<\/p>\n
In March 2023, a disgruntled former Jehovah\u2019s Witness member shot dead six people from the group\u2019s congregation in Hamburg, before turning the gun on himself.<\/p>\n
In May 2022, a 21-year-old gunman opened fire at a secondary school in northern Germany, wounding a female member of staff before being arrested.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A seventh person was wounded and reported in a stable condition. The suspected gunman tried to flee in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[250486,95,1975,5837,1550,1061,11928,14032,2082,3011,49753,89082,42,78,3375,30510,43,1523,675,5352,3048,9434,7819,4739,19687,1361,165,40,38,41,39,2443,2248],"class_list":["post-501658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-3monthold","tag-and","tag-at","tag-battle","tag-centre","tag-children","tag-custody","tag-daughter","tag-for","tag-four","tag-german","tag-gunman","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-killed","tag-mothers","tag-news","tag-over","tag-police","tag-reporting","tag-said","tag-shelter","tag-shooting","tag-six","tag-suspect","tag-that","tag-their","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-welfare","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}