Austria school shooter played online shooting games: investigators

A 21-year-old man, who shot dead nine students and a teacher of his former secondary school in Austria, carefully planned the seven-minute attack and was passionate about online shooting games, investigators said on Thursday.

Tuesday's attack in Austria's second largest city Graz ended when the former student took his own life in an unprecedented case of gun violence in Austria that has left the country in mourning.

Investigators have been unable to determine the motive so far, said criminal police head Michael Lohnegger, describing the shooter as a "very introverted person" who lived in a village outside Graz with his mother.

"We discovered that his great passion was participating in so-called online first-person shooting games," Lohnegger said.

The shooter, who left the school three years ago without finishing his studies and whom authorities have not named so far, carefully planned the attack, according to a handwritten note found at his home, he added.

This note "showed that the entire course of events had been planned by the perpetrator down to the most minute detail," Lohnegger said.

Lohnegger said the teacher he killed was one of his former teachers, while according to the investigation so far "he did not have any personal connection to the students" he shot.

- Classroom door -

Just before 10:00 am (0800 GMT) on Tuesday, the shooter entered the Dreierschuetzengasse secondary school through the main entrance with a backpack containing a pistol, sawn-off double-barrel shotgun and ammunition, while up to 400 students were inside, Lohnegger said.

He went to the third floor -- the school's top floor -- and used the restroom to arm himself and put on a gun belt with a hunting knife, shooting glasses and a headset.

"Starting at 9:57 am, he carried out a shooting spree in the school that lasted approximately seven minutes," Lohnegger said.

"He first went to the second floor, where he opened shots at random people in the school building... Then he went to the third floor...

"There, he shot at the locked classroom door repeatedly until he could open it, and then shot indiscriminately at the people inside," Lohnegger added.

He then returned to the restroom and shot himself there, he added, just as police were arriving at the school.

The gunman, who received a gun licence after undergoing a psychological assessment in March, purchased the shotgun from a gun dealer in Graz early April and the pistol from another dealer in the city in late May, Lohnegger added.

The victims were a teacher and nine teenagers, including a Franco-Austrian and a Polish national, aged between 14 and 17.

Eleven people, including two Romanians and an Iranian, were wounded.

The government declared three days of mourning, and a debate has begun on gun laws.

During a search at the perpetrator's home, police also found a "non-functional" homemade bomb, a farewell letter as well as a video message addressed to his mother.