Gunman in Black Combat Gear Kills 10+ at German School

[slomo]

I think it would be interesting for the more mathematically inclined among us to plot the frequency of killing sprees in some way. Are they really increasing? Do they increase during certain times of year? Do they increase in correlation with some other variable?

And for cartographers, how about locations? Is there any pattern that comes up? I dunno, geographic features? Geologic features, perhaps (thinking of how some areas of I think it's limestone concentrations seem also to be areas of paranormal activity)? Electromagnetic properties? Ley lines?

If somebody will gather the data, I will gladly do the analysis. The time-to-event analysis is particularly easy to do if you know how. There are the usual caveats about the censoring process (who/what decides whether an event gets reported?) but we can address that issue later.

[esotericmetal]

Here is video of the gunman right before he was shot. This does not look like someone who was wearing 'combat fatigues.'

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9c7_1236837917

Is it just me or does it look like the kid lies on the ground as if he either decided to on his own, or was instructed to. It says that the video shows "the final moments of a teenage gunman who killed 15 people before turning the gun on himself has emerged". Nowhere in the video does the kid turn the gun on himself. Does that mean he decided to lie down first and then shoot himself? Is it just me or does this seem strange?

[blanc]

Little attention and few resources are applied to the causes of deep unhappiness/mental illness. Some thirty years ago a former student at a school I'd taught at burnt it down (no-one hurt luckily). He had come into a class I was teaching shortly before this, and asked about his exam certificates. We'd had a 'normal' conversation about his prospects, he had been rather good at the subject I taught. From press reports after his arrest, it was said that he was disappointed by his results. He was sent to prison. The general response was one of condamnation, he was written off as a no good malcontent. From the little I knew, I'm sure there was much more involved, in lack of family support, a run in with a staff member with a particularly bullying attitude etc. I felt pretty sad that his life had gone so badly wrong, and that apparently nothing was to be done to help someone so young with those problems. I don't think one can rely on media reports to understand these events. We are simply told what 'they' want us to hear, or perhaps what we want to hear ourselves - that someone unaccountably acted in a violent way.

[brainpanhandler]

Here is video of the gunman right before he was shot. This does not look like someone who was wearing 'combat fatigues.'

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9c7_1236837917

Is it just me or does it look like the kid lies on the ground as if he either decided to on his own, or was instructed to. It says that the video shows "the final moments of a teenage gunman who killed 15 people before turning the gun on himself has emerged". Nowhere in the video does the kid turn the gun on himself. Does that mean he decided to lie down first and then shoot himself? Is it just me or does this seem strange?

It's stranger than hell. The gunman seems to fiddle with his weapon as though it has malfunctioned, although maybe he just ran out of ammo. He may have had another weapon with which to shoot himself but it does not appear in the video as if he produces another weapon. Neither does it appear he is wearing black camo, although it really is hard to tell. Whoever took the video is either stupid or brave as hell. The gunman seems to look over in the direction of the camera a couple of times. I know I wouldn't have taken that video. I'd have taken cover. And the way the shooter lays down so abruptly really is curious as hell. It certainly seems as though he was given a command and complied.

[wintler2]

.. I don't think one can rely on media reports to understand these events. We are simply told what 'they' want us to hear, or perhaps what we want to hear ourselves - that someone unaccountably acted in a violent way.[emphasis added]

makes sense to me, incomprehension (rapidly followed by diversion) is, sadly, easier than empathy or compassion.

[Gouda]

The video: looks like the suicide/or not shot is edited out. Crappy clip anyway.

Much stranger is the internet hoax:

School Shooting Internet Post a Fake

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 85,00.html

The minister, Heribert Rech, announced one of the most important finds himself. In the night before the 17-year-old shooter went on his rampage, Rech said, [Tim Kretschmer] had logged into an Internet forum and written: "I am going to go to my former school tomorrow and thoroughly toast it…. Remember the name of the town Winnenden."

Unfortunately, the forum entry was most likely a fake. Just hours after Rech announced the existence of the post, Stuttgart prosecutors on Thursday evening said that "in the course of the afternoon, doubts arose about the authenticity of the Internet chat."

Journalists at the press conference had been skeptical of Rech's certainty. Indeed, SPIEGEL ONLINE had received a number of e-mails on Wednesday evening highlighting the alleged posting -- found on a German language forum called krautchan.net -- but elected not to publish the information due to substantial doubts about the veracity of the message.

Rech, though, swept away the doubts at the press conference, saying that investigators had found the relevant data on K.'s computer. As a result, newspapers and Web sites around Germany -- including SPIEGEL ONLINE -- ran with the story. On Thursday evening, though, a police spokesman said that investigators had not, in fact, found any traces that K. had been responsible for the posting. Indeed, it appears that K. had already shut his computer off well before the fake posting's 2:46 a.m. time stamp.

"Some crazy must have put this false message into the world," Rech told Süddeutsche Zeitung late on Thursday. But the state interior minister defended himself, saying "I constantly made it clear that the investigation results were preliminary."

One might inquire as to what time/when this "crazy" posted the fake chat message attributed to Tim Kretschmer - was it posted? - and can a time stamp be faked? And why did the police first say they'd found this chat evidence on his computer?

German police now question whether killer posted warning

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europ ... index.html

(CNN) -- German police late Thursday backed away from earlier assertions that a teen posted warnings on a German-language Web site before killing 15 people in a shooting rampage.

Police spokesman Gabor Sipos said investigators now have doubts about whether Tim Kretschmer posted he was "fed up with this bloody life" and was going to take a weapon to his old school and "give them hell."

Earlier Thursday, authorities quoted postings from the Web site, krautchan.net, that they attributed to Kretschmer, saying they had two independent sources who had information that the messages appeared on the site before the killings.

Officials said based on the two sources, they believed the messages were authentic and linked to Kretschmer. iReport.com: Fear and confusion in Winnenden

But later, Sipos said police were questioning the two teenagers who claimed they had seen the postings prior to the rampage and that investigators had found no evidence on Kretschmer's computer that he might have posted such entries.

Sipos also said investigators were talking with the U.S.-based Internet service provider that runs the server that hosts krautchan.net.

A message on the Web site denied that any such messages had appeared there.

"No killing spree was announced here," the message on krautchan.net said.

"There's nothing to see anyway, since the German press was unfortunately fooled (and probably not for the first time either) by a forgery," the posting said.

"Maybe he visited the site, but he definitely didn't write the post that went through the news, because that one never existed," the posting on krautchan.net said.

CNN was unable to reach the owner or owners of krautchan.net because they have registered with DomainsByProxy, which masks their real identities.

HUH?

[Alfred Joe's Boy]

I think it would be interesting for the more mathematically inclined among us to plot the frequency of killing sprees in some way. Are they really increasing? Do they increase during certain times of year? Do they increase in correlation with some other variable?

And for cartographers, how about locations? Is there any pattern that comes up? I dunno, geographic features? Geologic features, perhaps (thinking of how some areas of I think it's limestone concentrations seem also to be areas of paranormal activity)? Electromagnetic properties? Ley lines?

If somebody will gather the data, I will gladly do the analysis. The time-to-event analysis is particularly easy to do if you know how. There are the usual caveats about the censoring process (who/what decides whether an event gets reported?) but we can address that issue later.

In a private correspondence about the "straight line" phenomenon I referred to above, I received the following message:
"Since these are in a rather straight line, (And basically from west to east?) maybe some of the more intrepid, with more time on their hands, can put together a list of these senseless killings over the years. Why? The only thing that would create such a straight line, and if others followed suit, would be the PATH OF A SATELLITE!
Especially after all the things talked about over the years on the various "sites."
I probably don't have the time but anyone with Google Earth, access to some satellite orbits and a reference of these kinds of senseless killings might be able to show a correlation. Not only in America but the rest of the world. And being suspicious, I would say that checking other countries would be an even better indication, especially in "previous" years. Wouldn't you think that someone with some sort of reputation for clandestine operations would experiment out of this country first, I mean except for the NYC Subway System?"

[Fat Lady Singing]

If somebody will gather the data, I will gladly do the analysis. The time-to-event analysis is particularly easy to do if you know how. There are the usual caveats about the censoring process (who/what decides whether an event gets reported?) but we can address that issue later.

I'll do some initial googling around this weekend, at least to try to figure out some dates. And yes, you're right, of course, for us as armchair analysts and researchers, we are almost wholly dependent upon the media, but maybe we could at least get a sketch, if not a completed photorealistic painting. Thanks for volunteering, slomo!

[slomo]

If somebody will gather the data, I will gladly do the analysis. The time-to-event analysis is particularly easy to do if you know how. There are the usual caveats about the censoring process (who/what decides whether an event gets reported?) but we can address that issue later.

I'll do some initial googling around this weekend, at least to try to figure out some dates. And yes, you're right, of course, for us as armchair analysts and researchers, we are almost wholly dependent upon the media, but maybe we could at least get a sketch, if not a completed photorealistic painting. Thanks for volunteering, slomo!

Fat Lady:

I created a more machine-readable data set in Excel format from this resource:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

Here is the data dump:

Date Location Description
02/02/96 Moses Lake, Wash. Two students and one teacher killed, one other wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.
03/13/96 Dunblane, Scotland 16 children and one teacher killed at Dunblane Primary School by Thomas Hamilton, who then killed himself. 10 others wounded in attack.
02/19/97 Bethel, Alaska Principal and one student killed, two others wounded by Evan Ramsey, 16.
03/01/97 Sanaa, Yemen Eight people (six students and two others) at two schools killed by Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri.
10/01/97 Pearl, Miss. Two students killed and seven wounded by Luke Woodham, 16, who was also accused of killing his mother. He and his friends were said to be outcasts who worshiped Satan.
12/01/97 West Paducah, Ky. Three students killed, five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle at Heath High School.
12/15/97 Stamps, Ark. Two students wounded. Colt Todd, 14, was hiding in the woods when he shot the students as they stood in the parking lot.
03/24/98 Jonesboro, Ark. Four students and one teacher killed, ten others wounded outside as Westside Middle School emptied during a false fire alarm. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shot at their classmates and teachers from the woods.
04/24/98 Edinboro, Pa. One teacher, John Gillette, killed, two students wounded at a dance at James W. Parker Middle School. Andrew Wurst, 14, was charged.
05/19/98 Fayetteville, Tenn. One student killed in the parking lot at Lincoln County High School three days before he was to graduate. The victim was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis.
05/21/98 Springfield, Ore. Two students killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. Kinkel had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found dead at home.
06/15/98 Richmond, Va. One teacher and one guidance counselor wounded by a 14-year-old boy in the school hallway.
04/20/99 Littleton, Colo. 14 students (including killers) and one teacher killed, 23 others wounded at Columbine High School in the nation's deadliest school shooting. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves.
04/28/99 Taber, Alberta, Canada One student killed, one wounded at W. R. Myers High School in first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years. The suspect, a 14-year-old boy, had dropped out of school after he was severely ostracized by his classmates.
05/20/99 Conyers, Ga. Six students injured at Heritage High School by Thomas Solomon, 15, who was reportedly depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend.
11/19/99 Deming, N.M. Victor Cordova Jr., 12, shot and killed Araceli Tena, 13, in the lobby of Deming Middle School.
12/06/99 Fort Gibson, Okla. Four students wounded as Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School.
12/07/99 Veghel, Netherlands One teacher and three students wounded by a 17-year-old student.
02/29/00 Mount Morris Township, Mich. Six-year-old Kayla Rolland shot dead at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Mich. The assailant was identified as a six-year-old boy with a .32-caliber handgun.
03/01/00 Branneburg, Germany One teacher killed by a 15-year-old student, who then shot himself. The shooter has been in a coma ever since.
03/10/00 Savannah, Ga. Two students killed by Darrell Ingram, 19, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.
05/26/00 Lake Worth, Fla. One teacher, Barry Grunow, shot and killed at Lake Worth Middle School by Nate Brazill, 13, with .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the last day of classes.
09/26/00 New Orleans, La. Two students wounded with the same gun during a fight at Woodson Middle School.
01/17/01 Baltimore, Md. One student shot and killed in front of Lake Clifton Eastern High School.
01/18/01 Jan, Sweden One student killed by two boys, ages 17 and 19.
03/05/01 Santee, Calif. Two killed and 13 wounded by Charles Andrew Williams, 15, firing from a bathroom at Santana High School.
03/07/01 Williamsport, Pa. Elizabeth Catherine Bush, 14, wounded student Kimberly Marchese in the cafeteria of Bishop Neumann High School; she was depressed and frequently teased.
03/22/01 Granite Hills, Calif. One teacher and three students wounded by Jason Hoffman, 18, at Granite Hills High School. A policeman shot and wounded Hoffman.
03/30/01 Gary, Ind. One student killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from Lew Wallace High School.
11/12/01 Caro, Mich. Chris Buschbacher, 17, took two hostages at the Caro Learning Center before killing himself.
01/15/02 New York, N.Y. A teenager wounded two students at Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
02/19/02 Freising, Germany Two killed in Eching by a man at the factory from which he had been fired; he then traveled to Freising and killed the headmaster of the technical school from which he had been expelled. He also wounded another teacher before killing himself.
04/26/02 Erfurt, Germany 13 teachers, two students, and one policeman killed, ten wounded by Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school. Steinhaeuser then killed himself.
04/29/02 Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina One teacher killed, one wounded by Dragoslav Petkovic, 17, who then killed himself.
10/28/02 Tucson, Ariz. Robert S. Flores Jr., 41, a student at the nursing school at the University of Arizona, shot and killed three female professors and then himself.
04/14/03 New Orleans, La. One 15-year-old killed, and three students wounded at John McDonogh High School by gunfire from four teenagers (none were students at the school). The motive was gang-related.
04/24/03 Red Lion, Pa. James Sheets, 14, killed principal Eugene Segro of Red Lion Area Junior High School before killing himself.
09/24/03 Cold Spring, Minn. Two students are killed at Rocori High School by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.
09/28/04 Carmen de Patagones, Argentina Three students killed and 6 wounded by a 15-year-old Argentininan student in a town 620 miles south of Buenos Aires.
03/21/05 Red Lake, Minn. Jeff Weise, 16, killed grandfather and companion, then arrived at school where he killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead.
11/08/05 Jacksboro, Tenn. One 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School and seriously wounded two other administrators.
08/24/06 Essex, Vt. Christopher Williams, 27, looking for his ex-girlfriend at Essex Elementary School, shot two teachers, killing one and wounding another. Before going to the school, he had killed the ex-girlfriend's mother.
09/13/06 Montreal, Canada Kimveer Gill, 25, opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon at Dawson College. Anastasia De Sousa, 18, died and more than a dozen students and faculty were wounded before Gill killed himself.
09/27/06 Bailey, Colo. Adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School and then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself.
09/29/06 Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
10/03/06 Nickel Mines, Pa. 32-year-old Carl Charles Roberts IV entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died.
01/03/07 Tacoma, Wash. Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in the hallway of Henry Foss High School.
04/16/07 Blacksburg, Va. A 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more 2 hours later in a classroom building. His suicide brought the death toll to 33, making the shooting rampage the most deadly in U.S. history. Fifteen others were wounded.
09/21/07 Dover, Del. A Delaware State Univesity Freshman, Loyer D. Brandon, shot and wounded two other Freshman students on the University campus. Brandon is being charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless engagement, as well as a gun charge.
10/10/07 Cleveland, Ohio A 14-year-old student at a Cleveland high school, Asa H. Coon, shot and injured two students and two teachers before he shot and killed himself. The victims' injuries were not life-threatening.
11/07/07 Tuusula, Finland An 18-year-old student in southern Finland shot and killed five boys, two girls, and the female principal at Jokela High School. At least 10 others were injured. The gunman shot himself and died from his wounds in the hospital.
02/08/08 Baton Rouge, Louisiana A nursing student shot and killed two women and then herself in a classroom at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.
02/11/08 Memphis, Tennessee A 17-year-old student at Mitchell High School shot and wounded a classmate in gym class.
02/12/08 Oxnard, California A 14-year-old boy shot a student at E.O. Green Junior High School causing the 15-year-old victim to be brain dead.
02/14/08 DeKalb, Illinois Gunman killed five students and then himself, and wounded 17 more when he opened fire on a classroom at Northern Illinois University. The gunman, Stephen P. Kazmierczak, was identified as a former graduate student at the university in 2007.
09/23/08 Kauhajoki, Finland A 20-year-old male student shot and killed at least nine students and himself at a vocational college in Kauhajok, 330km (205 miles) north of the capital, Helsinki.
11/12/08 Fort Lauderdale, Florida A 15-year-old female student was shot and killed by a classmate at at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale.
03/11/09 Winnenden, Germany Fifteen people were shot and killed at Albertville Technical High School in southwestern Germany by a 17-year-old boy who attended the same school.

[slomo]

Based on the 58 events described in my last post, here is a plot of relative odds (with pointwise 95% confidence band) of an "event":

[Fat Lady Singing]

Wow, Slomo -- thanks so much for that! These are school murders, which might make it easier to study. I had been thinking more of mass or spree killings in general, including the subset of school incidents. I did a little initial research yesterday only to realize that what I had been proposing would be impossible, primarily because, as pointed out, the only thing we have to go on is media coverage and prior to, say, the 90s, maybe the 80s, there wasn't that much of it except for only the most heinous incidents.

I did discover, though, that mass and spree killings (of the "snapping and trying to kill large numbers of people" kind that aren't overt acts of terrorism) isn't purely a Western phenomenon. There are a surprising number of Chinese cases, for instance.

WRT the question of "are the incidents increasing in frequency?" I think we can only conclude that coverage of them is increasing.

Not very helpful, I know. I guess I was hoping I'd be able to find some research along these lines that had already been performed, but at least so far I haven't found it.

Maybe I'll just go with the cases you list, slomo... it's a place to start, anyway.

[Fat Lady Singing]

Based on the 58 events described in my last post, here is a plot of relative odds (with pointwise 95% confidence band) of an "event":

Thanks for that, as well! I had noticed that the events seem to congregate around early spring and early fall. Obviously, since school isn't in session during the summer (or just has limited attendance for summer school), there would be fewer in the summer months. But why a March/April spike? You might think pressures of finals, but I would think finals would usually be a little later in the year. When I was in school, May was usually the month of finals. Interesting.

And, from your list, while not exclusively a American phenomenon, the majority of cases are from the US. I'm going to look at that list some more.

[slomo]

Actually, I don't see any significant trend.

Here are some more stats:

Likelihood ratio test for an association by month (11 df): P=0.0003
Likelihood ratio test for an association by phase of moon, conditional on month (2 df): P= 0.4453
Likelihood ratio test for trend, conditional on month (1 df): P= 0.9120

Soooo..... there is definitely a pattern by month (perhaps driven only by school being in session), but no pattern by phase of moon, and there is no increasing trend.

If you want to add to the data set to include other events, feel free to do so, but it should be as unbiased as possible (i.e. don't pick and choose which ones you want to include -- include everything you can fine for whatever defined class of events you decide upon).

[slomo]

Here is a matrix of P values showing associations by astrological phase. Diagonal entries represent absolute position of planet, while off-diagonal entries represent relative position (phase of column planet relative to row planet):

SUN MOON MERCURY VENUS MARS JUPITER SATURN URANUS NEPTUNE PLUTO
SUN 0.4490 0.4453 0.5252 0.8734 0.9595 0.0065 0.0308 0.1410 0.3363 0.3290
MOON 0.4453 0.9157 0.6203 0.3465 0.0071 0.7009 0.6909 0.7955 0.8465 0.8478
MERCURY 0.5252 0.6203 0.4713 0.8724 0.9849 0.0016 0.0240 0.3656 0.5589 0.5709
VENUS 0.8734 0.3465 0.8724 1.0000 0.7418 0.0121 0.0082 0.4435 0.7866 0.7575
MARS 0.9595 0.0071 0.9849 0.7418 0.9060 0.2268 0.3575 0.9559 0.9852 0.9850
JUPITER 0.0065 0.7009 0.0016 0.0121 0.2268 0.0946 0.5565 0.2463 0.1622 0.1684
SATURN 0.0308 0.6909 0.0240 0.0082 0.3575 0.5565 0.7209 0.5527 0.6178 0.5947
URANUS 0.1410 0.7955 0.3656 0.4435 0.9559 0.2463 0.5527 0.9526 0.9959 0.9634
NEPTUNE 0.3363 0.8465 0.5589 0.7866 0.9852 0.1622 0.6178 0.9959 0.8268 0.6667
PLUTO 0.3290 0.8478 0.5709 0.7575 0.9850 0.1684 0.5947 0.9634 0.6667 0.7703


Keep in mind that there is an enormous multiple comparisons problem, so the appropriate Bonferroni-corrected threshold for significant P-value would be 2*0.05/10/11 = 0.00091. By this standard, none of these associations is significant. However, Bonferroni is known to be conservative.

The most prominent associations are MARS+MOON (not exactly surprising), SUN+JUPITER, JUPITER+MERCURY, maybe also SATURN+VENUS.

EDIT: Added SUN (so that there are now 55 comparisons instead of 45)

[Fat Lady Singing]

"Keep in mind that there is an enormous multiple comparisons problem, so the appropriate Bonferroni-corrected threshold for significant P-value would be 2*0.05/9/10 = 0.0011. By this standard, none of these associations is significant. However, Bonferroni is known to be conservative. "

Hm, I'm sure that's English... but it's ye olde greek to me.

Right now I'm plotting the towns on a Google map. So far, the interesting point is that none of them are major population centers.