Police say the gunman was embroiled in a custody battle over his three-month old daughter.<\/p>\n
Published On 29 Jun 202629 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
A gunman embroiled in a custody battle over his three-month-old daughter has killed six people and wounded another at a child welfare centre in the town of Stade near Hamburg in Germany.<\/p>\n
The gunman was arrested following the shooting on Monday. He tried to flee in a car driven by a 55-year-old woman believed to have \u201ca close connection to the gunman\u2019s family\u201d but was captured after a short chase, according to Kathrin Schuol, the police chief for Lueneburg, who is leading the investigation.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe perpetrator had an appointment today, along with many of the victims, to discuss future custody arrangements for his three-month-old daughter,\u201d Schuol said. \u201cBoth the child and her mother were present at the location but were not injured by gunfire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emergency workers rushed to the scene of the shooting and found four people already dead. A fifth person died soon after at the scene, while a sixth later succumbed to their wounds.<\/p>\n
The police chief said the victims \u2013 four women and two men \u2013 were all child welfare workers, and had all been shot \u201cin a brutal manner\u201d. A seventh person was reportedly wounded but is in a stable condition.<\/p>\n
The child welfare facility includes temporary accommodation for pregnant women or young mothers with children.<\/p>\n
Footage posted by Bild newspaper showed a car with a blown-out right tyre slowing to a halt in a tree-lined road.<\/p>\n
Police opened fire on the car but neither the suspected gunman nor the driver were hurt, the police chief said. Both are being held in police custody.<\/p>\n
The area was closed off by police as forensic experts in white suits and plainclothes police arrived at the scene.<\/p>\n
The suspect was previously known to police and had made threats in the past, but \u201chas not previously been regarded as a particularly violent individual\u201d, Schuol said.<\/p>\n
She said the suspect did not have a firearms licence, and it remains unclear how he obtained the weapon. She added that the suspect lives in Hanover, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the south.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s mother told police after the shooting that she was no longer in a relationship with the suspect, Schuol said.<\/p>\n
Stade is about 45km (27 miles) to the west of Hamburg, with a population of nearly \u00a050,000 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police say the gunman was embroiled in a custody battle over his three-month old daughter. Published On 29…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[591,145,49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-665385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}