Police surrounded a car with a flat tyre slowly halting on a tree-lined road in Stade, northern Germany, on Monday afternoon. Armed officers ran towards the vehicle and forced two occupants to lie flat on the ground. Within hours, three people were detained, and investigators confirmed a shooting at a youth welfare facility had left six people dead—an attack the Lower Saxony interior minister called an “extremely cold-blooded act of violence”.
Four women and a man were shot dead inside the centre on Dankersstrasse, the street south of the town centre where the facility houses temporary accommodation for pregnant women or young mothers with children. A sixth person, also an adult, died later in hospital from their injuries. Police said all the victims were adults.
“Six killed in Stade, Germany, after a 45-year-old man opened fire at a youth welfare centre over a custody dispute.”
The suspected shooter, a 45-year-old German man of Turkish descent, was among those arrested. The attack, authorities said, erupted over a “custody dispute” between the man and the mother of his three-month-old daughter, who lived at the facility. Neither the mother nor the child was among the dead.
Police had first received reports of shots at around 12:10 local time (10:10 GMT) and “immediately dispatched” patrol cars to the scene. The area was cordoned off, and a large police presence remained on site, with forensic experts in white suits combing the cobbled street lined with red brick homes. Officers warned the public to avoid the area but later said there was no further threat to the public.
Interior minister Daniela Behrens told a press conference on Monday evening that the shooting was not believed to be politically motivated or an extremist act. Lower Saxony police in Lüneburg said the motive “lies within the environment of the youth care facility”. German broadcasters reported that children at a nearby daycare and primary school were inside at the time and were later collected by their parents.
Mass shootings are rare in Germany. In 2023, a gunman in Hamburg killed six people before turning the gun on himself at a Jehovah’s Witness hall. In 2016, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man killed at least nine people in Munich. Police have not yet released the identities of the victims or the exact number of injured, but the investigation continues as the town of about 50,000 people grapples with the violence.