Family of mass murderer say they`re sorry

The family of the German teenager who shot 16 people at his former school expressed sorrow and incomprehension yesterday as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met officials to consider ways to limit television violence.

In their first public statement since the massacre last Friday, Robert Steinhaeuser`s father Guenter, mother Christel and older brother Peter said in an open letter they had never seen the hate that led him to kill teachers and school mates.

"Since this terrible day, we are asking ourselves more and more where Robert`s hate and despair came from and why we did not see it," the letter said. "Before this brutal act of madness we were a very ordinary family and knew a different Robert."

Steinhaeuser, 19, a failed student, went to his former school in the eastern German city of Erfurt last Friday and shot dead 13 teachers, two students, a police officer and himself in the country`s worst post-war massacre.

"The sorrow, despair and helplessness in our family are boundless," the family wrote. "We will forever be sorry that our son and brother has brought such horrifying suffering to the victims and their relatives."

German President Johannes Rau is due to lead a memorial service today at exactly the same time in the morning when Steinhaeuser began his killing spree a week earlier.

Police in the western city of Essen said they had arrested an 18-year-old suspected of trying to gas teachers and pupils at his former school. Nobody was hurt as a teacher noticed that a gas tap was open in the chemistry laboratory and alerted the police and the fire brigade.

In another school, in the eastern city of Magdeburg, police were investigating a death threat against a teacher sprayed onto a classroom wall. The words, discovered early yesterday, referred to the Erfurt massacre.

Officials are considering the impact violent video games and television programming could have had on Steinhaeuser.

Chancellor Schroeder met top broadcasting officials yesterday to discuss television violence.

Before the meeting he said the government preferred self-regulation by broadcasters, but would act to clamp down on screen violence if it saw fit.

"We rely very heavily on voluntary action, but where that doesn`t work, the legislator must act," he told journalists, adding he also planned talks with producers of videos and Internet images.

Presenting data showing overall crime up slightly in 2001 from 2000, Interior Minister Otto Schily said yesterday the Erfurt shooting could not have been prevented by tougher laws but said the government was nevertheless looking into tightening restrictions on weapons and violent video games.

"Anyone who thinks the Erfurt assailant could have been stopped by laws or fear of life in prison is wrong," he said.

Schily acknowledged the right to free speech and artistic expression would make it more difficult to place restrictions on the content of violent video games, films and Web sites.

"The question of art and free speech is difficult to resolve...There are violent scenes in Shakespeare but no one would ban Shakespeare," he said.

Officials said Steinhaeuser had planned his crime at least a few months before he shot his victims, mostly with point-blank shots to the head. Steinhaeuser applied for a gun licence a month after failing his school leaving-test last May.

Police have said the former pupil had stashed 500 rounds of ammunition in the school`s bathroom and could have killed many more but for a brave teacher`s intervention.

A loner who trained to become a marksman at two gun clubs, the troubled youth never got the chance to retake the exam because he was expelled from the school in Erfurt in October for forging an absentee note and not attending class.

The killer concealed these troubles from his family. "So far we have still not found the time to mourn our son and brother; we are thinking only of the victims and our thoughts are with their families," the Steinhaeusers said.