ERFURT: House No 40 where Frau Steinhauser, who lived with her 19 year-old son, Robert, on the new top floor, is the prettiest house on the sunny side of the street. On Saturday, the venetian blinds of Robert’s bedroom were pulled down. There was a police van outside and red and white ‘incident scene’ tape strung across the front garden.

But this was because, on Friday, Robert went back to his school (motto: ‘Learn to live’) and slaughtered a quarter of the teaching staff, two of his former schoolmates, a police officer and then himself. It emerged on Saturday that his orgy of lethal violence might have claimed dozens more victims had it not been for the breathtaking courage of one of the very teachers he so hated.

Yet, as the details of Robert Steinhauser’s life emerged, it became clear he was not a run-of-the-mill young man - and that he had been able to do what he did only because of incomprehensible lapses in the framing, or application, of Germany’s gun laws.

There were no more than hints at the terrible inner workings of his mind. He had been expelled from his school for dishonest behaviour and had already threatened one of his teachers. Yet the law allowed him to keep up to four lethal weapons. He was entitled to own the weapons he carried in Germany’s biggest multiple killing since the massacre at the Munich Olympics - and he learnt to use them partly at the local police shooting association.

Police said he frequently played truant and forged sick notes to cover his absences. It was this that led to his expulsion from the Gutenberg Gymnasium (equivalent to a grammar school) in February. Another indication pointing to what was to happen is the comment of a former schoolmate, Isabell Hartung, that Steinhauser had told her he wanted to do something for which he would always be remembered. It is now known he had amassed large quantities of ammunition. Steinhauser used only his pistol on his killing spree. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.