dpa
HANAU, Germany — The suspect in at least two deadly shootings in the western German town of Hanau has been found dead in an apartment, police said in the early hours of Thursday.
A specialist team also found another body at the address, the regional police said in a statement, adding that there was no indication there was another perpetrator.
The bodies were found hours after shots were fired in two separate areas of Hanau around 10 pm (2100GMT), killing nine people. Police did not confirm a third possible shooting in a nearby area.
Police said the two crime scenes were at Heumarkt, in the centre of Hanau, and Kurt-Schumacher-Platz in the western neighbourhood of Kesselstadt, some 2 kilometres away.
Authorities had earlier said around five people were injured and that there was no clear information on the background of the incidents.
Public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk reported that the first shots were fired at a shisha bar in the town centre, with witnesses saying they had heard eight or nine shots.
The report said that the perpetrators subsequently drove to Kesselstadt before they started shooting again at another shisha bar.
A police spokesman did not confirm the details of the Hessischer Rundfunk report, but police did say a dark car left the scene at Heumarkt.
Bullet casings were on the street in front of a business on the street, according to a dpa reporter. Police told passers-by to leave the area.
A photo from the Kesselstadt area showed a car covered in foil, with shards of glass next to it. Emergency services were in the area.
A third reported shooting in the northern neighbourhood of Lamboy was not confirmed, but a large police contingent was in the area. According to a spokesman of the prosecutor’s office there were no casualties in the area.
Heavily armed police had secured the area in the town centre and cordoned off the scene.
Hanau is around 20 kilometres east of Frankfurt and has a population of around 10,000.
The town’s mayor, Claus Kaminsky, said it was “an evening that you can hardly imagine being any worse.”
“It was a terrible evening, that will surely occupy us for a long long time and stay with us in sad memories,” he said in comments he made to an online broadcast from Bild newspaper.
Kaminsky did not give any more details or shine any light on possible motives for the shootings.
Katja Leikert, a parliamentarian for the Hanau constituency, said on Twitter that it was a “true horror scenario for us all.”
Leikert told dpa she was following the unfolding events on Twitter.
©2020 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)