Winnenden School Shooting - Perpetrator

Perpetrator

The perpetrator of the Winnenden school massacre was 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer (26 July 1991 – 11 March 2009), who lived with his parents in the neighbouring municipality of Leutenbach. He had graduated from Albertville Realschule in 2008 with relatively poor grades.

Kretschmer's failing grades had prevented him from entering an apprenticeship. He was attending a commercial high school (Donner + Kern) in Waiblingen to prepare for an apprenticeship for a commercial career. Several accounts described him as suffering from depression. Kretschmer was described by a friend as "a lonely and frustrated person who felt rejected by society". An anonymous friend described Kretschmer as a quiet student who began to withdraw from his peers.

He was an avid table tennis player and had hoped to become a professional player. Marko Habijanec, a Croatian table tennis player who coached Kretschmer at the Erdmannhausen sports club between 2000 and 2003, remembers him as being "a bit spoiled", with his mother fulfilling many of his demands. According to Habijanec, Kretschmer had great difficulties accepting defeat: he would have a temper tantrum, yelling and throwing his racket. The coach said that, having a high opinion of his own abilities, Kretschmer openly denigrated his teammates. When Habijanec discussed Tim's attitude with his mother, he discovered she sided fully with her son.

Media reports say he enjoyed playing the video game Counter-Strike and playing with airsoft guns. Commentators also noted that "game addiction is a symptom of something wrong and not a cause". He also shot his guns in the forest behind his home and also in the basement of his house. On his last day alive, Kretschmer played the video game Far Cry 2 online as "JawsPredator1".

He had profiles at "MyVideo.de", Kwick.de and other websites. He often played poker with his classmates in the "Cafe Tunix" after school hours in Waiblingen.

After inspection of his computer, officers found that Kretschmer was interested in sadomasochistic scenes where a man is bound and humiliated by women. He viewed such a movie the evening before his attacks.

Kretschmer did not have a criminal record. The press reported that in 2008, Kretschmer had received treatment as an in-patient at the Weissenhoff Psychiatric Clinic near the town of Heilbronn. After being discharged, Kretschmer was supposed to continue his treatment as an out-patient in Winnenden, but ended his treatment. According to police and clinic staff, he had been treated repeatedly for clinical depression on an out-patient basis in 2008. His family rejected these claims and maintained that he never received psychiatric treatment. According to a psychiatric report prepared for the prosecutor's office, Kretschmer met five times with a therapist and talked about his growing anger and violent urges; the therapist informed Kretschmer's parents.

In a press conference on 12 March, police reported that Kretschmer had announced his killing spree several hours ahead of time in an Internet chatroom. The next day, police determined that this message had not been written on Kretschmer's computer and was a forgery.

Three weeks before the shooting, Kretschmer had written a letter to his parents, saying that he was suffering and could not go on.

The incident occurred one day after the Geneva County massacre in Alabama, United States. Some commentators thought the events in Geneva County may have triggered Kretschmer's shooting spree, but that hypothesis could not be verified.