The alleged perpetrator of last week’s mass shooting in Germany that left six people dead reportedly escaped prison in Turkey after being accused of sexual assault, including against his own daughter.
According to documents obtained from the Turkish justice system by German daily Bild, the man accused of shooting and killing six people at a facility which housed vulnerable mothers and their children in Stade, a city in the province of Lower Saxony in northern Germany, has an allegedly sordid past in his native country.
The documents revealed that Fatih G. (45) was imprisoned in Turkey in 2021 while facing trial for multiple crimes, including suspicion of a serious sexual offence in the city of Kahramanmaraş in 2007. While awaiting trial, he is said to have escaped from prison and is reportedly still wanted by Turkish authorities.
While on the run, the German national is also alleged to have committed sexual assault against his own daughter in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
The suspected mass shooter was born in Germany in 1981 in the town of Goslar in Lower Saxony to a Turkish migrant father, who died in Turkey in 2021.
Authorities have so far downplayed the idea that there was any political or religious motivation behind the Stade mass shooting last week, with police saying that the attack was likely spurred by a custody dispute between the suspect and his child’s mother, who was staying in the facility with her daughter at the time of the shooting.
In addition to his alleged criminal history in his familial homeland, the second-generation Turkish migrant is said to have been known to German police, including for allegedly making violent threats; however, he had no criminal record within Germany.
He is also said to have a checkered romantic history, reportedly having been married and divorced three times.
This week, it was also revealed that the shooting in Stade had left two young children orphaned. The two infants, who just weeks earlier lost their father to an undisclosed cause, also lost their 32-year-old mother during the shooting at the mother-child facility, where she worked as a caregiver.