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German teen who attacked school awakes from coma

[September 21, 2009] BERLIN (AP) -- A German teenager who was shot by police after wounding nine students and a teacher with an ax, knives and Molotov cocktails has awoken from a medically induced coma, a prosecutor said Monday.

Senior public prosecutor Gudrun Lehnberger told The Associated Press that the 18-year-old was responsive but has not yet been questioned about Thursday's attack. But Lehnberger said that if his health did not deteriorate again, the prosecutor's office would serve a warrant for 10 counts of attempted murder later in the day.

The boy entered his school in Ansbach in Bavaria shortly after classes started, threw Molotov cocktails into a classroom and attacked students with an ax. Police shot him five times in the upper body.

Two girls who suffered the most serious wounds to the head are both out of critical condition, officials said. One of them suffered a blow to the head with an ax and the other serious burns.

The school reopened on Monday and some 700 pupils returned to classes, principal Franz Stark said.

"We slowly want to return to normal," Stark said.

But German pupils remained on edge Monday -- an alarm at a school in Cologne brought massive police forces to the scene, but a thorough search of the building did not bring up any kind of evidence for a possible attack.

The Ansbach incident was the second attack on a school in Germany this year, and took place just three days into Bavaria's new school year.

In March, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer fatally shot 12 people at his former school in the southwestern town of Winnenden. He fled the building and killed three more people before turning the gun on himself.

That was the nation's second-worst school shooting. A 2002 shooting spree in Erfurt that left 17 dead, including the gunman.

After Kretschmer's attack in Winnenden, Germany moved to tighten checks on gun owners.

[Associated Press]

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