About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 2020)
8A Saturday, February 22, 2020 ^ The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com LOCAL/WORLD Survivor: German shooter emptied magazine, left BY CHRISTOPH NOELTING Associated Press HANAU — Piter Minnemann and his friends were eating when they heard shots fired outside the door of the snack bar in Hanau where they had gathered. Minnemann, 18, recalled that he had just got his pizza when the first shots were heard at the Arena Bar. It was the second site targeted in Wednesday night’s shooting of nine people by a German man who had posted an online rant calling for the “complete extermination” of many “races or cultures in our midst.” “We thought it was a blank gun or something. We thought nothing of it,” he said. “Then the man came in, he fired.” The gunman shot two people before com ing into the bar, where “he aimed right at us — he shot the first one in the head,” Minnemann said. A pregnant woman jumped out of the win dow, he said. “He came, fired, emptied his magazine, then everything was quiet, then he walked out normally,” he recalled. “I opened my eyes, I saw that I was alive, I was happy. I asked if people were OK but Edris — I don’t know if he’s still alive but I think he survived — he had a hole in his throat and he said, ‘I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit,’ my other friend Momo was hit in the shoulder.” In all, Hanau native Minnemann said he lost four or five “friends I have known for years.” He spoke to The Associated Press next to a statue of the Brothers Grimm, the collectors of folk and fairy-tales who hailed from Hanau, in the town’s main square. That memorial is now festooned with flowers and candles in memory of Wednesday night’s victims. “I still can’t believe it, in some situations it’s as if nothing happened, but when I see the people crying, when I see this, then it becomes true again,... then you see that it is real,” he said. “But otherwise, I can’t believe that this happened to us, us of all people, in the very place where we are every day, where we chill out everyday.” “I thought it was some kind of gang stuff at first,” Minnemann said. He recalled that there were 12 or 13 people at the scene at the time of the shooting. Many others died, he said — “I was very lucky.” Another witness of the shooting at the Arena Bar told Turkey’s Haber television that he and his friends heard five or six shots outside before the gunman entered. “He shot the first people he saw in the head. A man fell to the floor,” Muhammed Beyazkender, who was lying in his hospital bed with a bandaged shoulder, said on Thurs day. “Then he fired at all of us. I got shot in the arm while I tried to hide behind the wall. ” Beyazkender said he lay on the floor on top of someone, and someone then lay on top of him, and someone else then on top of him. “There was a kid underneath me with a hole in his throat,” he said. “The kid said to me: ‘my brother, I cannot feel my tongue; I cannot breathe.’ I said to him, recite the Kalima Shahadat prayer (from the Quran). He recited the Kalima Shahadat, he called on everyone to recite it. There was no other sound, just the two of us. I didn’t see him escape or anything.” Minnemann Two woman mourn near a kiosk in Hanau, Germany Friday, Feb. 21, two days after a 43-year-old German man shot and killed several people at several locations in a Frankfurt suburb on Wednesday, Feb. 19. MICHAEL PROBST Associated Press Few details on man’s gunshot wound A 19-year-old Hispanic man received a gunshot wound to the leg sometime Thurs day night or early Friday morning in the vicinity of Lanier Point Park, according to Gainesville police. Police had no other details on exactly where, when or how the incident happened. Police spokeswoman Cpl. Jessica Van said the man was not talking to investigators. Nate McCullough HUNTING-FISHING CAMPING-HIKING-BIKING Saturday, March 14th 10am - 5pm Gainesville Civic Center 830 Green St NE, Gainesville, GA 30501 For more information, please contact Leah Nelson at lnelson@gainesvilletimes. com 770-535-6330 PRESENTED BY Sftnes gainesvilletimes.com NASHVILLE MUSIC CITY ADVENTURE April 20, 21, 22, 2020 3 Day / 2 Night All Inclusive Payment deadline March 18, 2020. 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