# 1999 Bielefeld shooting

On 9 November 1999, a mass murder took place at an apartment building in Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, when 34-year-old Mehmet Kaya shot and killed seven members of the same family. The gunman fled the state and killed himself hours later when he was caught by police in Tübingen.

## Shooting

On the evening of 9 November 1999, at around 18:00, Mehmet Kaya told his wife that he was going to drive his VW bus out of town for a work-related activity. He drove from his home in Tübingen to Bielefeld for two hours and arrived at his destination just after 20:00. At 20:45, Kaya entered a six-floor housing complex in Sudbrack borough and rang the doorbell of apartment 21 on the first floor, where the 13-person Tetik family resided.
The door was opened by Ayşe Tetik, the wife of the Tetik son, who was immediately shot twice by Kaya. Entering the living room, he shot Mehmet Tetik and his brother-in-law Kemal Çerçi as they were sitting on a couch. The mother of the household, Fatima, tried to pull Kaya to the ground, pleading with him to "please not kill them", but Kaya ignored the elderly woman and proceeded to shoot her husband Halit Tetik. Kaya followed the fleeing Ayşe Çerçi into a bedroom, where he shot her and her two teenage sisters Esengül and Zübeyde Tetik. Kaya then walked out of the apartment, returned to his car and drove back onto the Autobahn. The murders occurred in the span of just over a minute. Kaya reloaded the magazine four times and 18 casings were found at the scene.
At 20:49, four minutes after the shooting. police arrived at the scene, finding six of the victims dead. Two women were found alive. 53-year-old Fatima Tetik was unharmed, but 17-year-old Esengül Tetik was in critical condition and had to be resuscitated at the scene. Esengül died of her injuries in the afternoon of the following day. In the bedroom, officers found four surviving children, aged 3 to 15. One of the children identified the attacker to officers, with police launching a nationwide manhunt for Kaya at 21:30.
Police surveiled all major roadways between North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg. A patrol car spotted Kaya's distinct red-white vehicle on B27 near Reutlingen and engaged him in a car chase. Just before reaching the junction into Tübingen, Kaya steered off the road, exited the car and fired two fatal gunshot into his temple.

## Victims

All victims were part of the same Turkish family from Hatay Province. The father was born in the village Topraktutan, while his oldest daughter and son were born in Antakya. All had been shot in the head. The deceased are:
* Halit Tetik (61), father
* Mehmet Tetik (29), son
* Kemal Çerçi (31), son-in-law
* Ayşe Tetik (32), daughter-in-law
* Ayşe Çerçi (26), daughter
* Zübeyde Tetik (19), daughter
* Esengül Tetik (17), daughter
Five children, all siblings, survived the shooting unharmed. 15-year-old Fatoş and 9-year-old Ali had hidden themselves away when the shooter entered the bedroom. Three-year-old triplets Meryem and Cafer were sleeping in an adjacent room; the third triplet Hatice had spent the night at a hospital for medical treatment. 13-year-old Gül was in the basement at the time of the shooting.

## Perpetrator

Mehmet Kaya was born in 1965 in Hasköy [tr], Uşak Province, Turkey, as the son of an imam. He graduated Kütahya İmam-Hatip High School in 1983 and studied theology at Atatürk University and Dokuz Eylül University, interning as a religious official at Buca Müftülüğü Office in İzmir since 1986. He was employed as a civil servant under the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DİB) and served as a preacher in Aliağa for four years, during which time he was married. In the early 1990s, Kaya applied for a transfer abroad to the DİB, which was granted and fulfilled on 28 December 1992. He initially worked as a cleric employee in the Religious Services Attaché of the Consulate-General of Turkey in Münster, then worked as an Islamic teacher at Bielefeld Central Mosque, operated by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DİTİB). He, his wife and their four children lived with two of Kaya's sisters and brothers. Kaya's wife was pregnant with a fifth child at the time of the shooting.
Kaya headed Quran courses at the Bielefeld mosque for about four years until filing a resignation on 1 September 1998. Officially, he stated his reasons for doing so as "familial" and that he was going to pursue a master's degree. However, Kaya had been the subject of harassment complaints by parents, who alleged that he was grooming and molesting girls under his tutorship. Mosque officials and friends of Kaya stated that the resignation was forced after it was discovered that he had sexual relations with a then-underaged Zübeyde Tetik. He had impregnated her and attempted to convince her parents to let Zübeyde become his second wife. The proposal was denied and the pregnancy was terminated. Kaya subsequently moved to Tübingen, but made repeated threats against the family. On the day of the shooting, he had learned that Zübeyde had married a paternal cousin, Ahmet Çerçi, in a ceremony in Latakia, Syria, on 25 July 1999. Despite the rape accusations and threats, Kaya did not have a criminal record and was regarded as quiet and unremarkable. The pistol used in the murders was unregistered and illegally in his possession. The children of the Tetik family had identified Kaya as "Mehmet Hoca".

## Aftermath

Bielefeld Prosecutor Klaus Metzler and Bielefeld Police Homicide Squad Chief Hartmut Runte called the shooting "unprecedented". The shooting came amidst a multitude of similar spree killings, including the Bad Reichenhall shooting and the Dillingen shooting. The day prior in Nidderau, a 38-year-old German man heavily injured three people in a random axe attack. The day of the shooting, a 24-year-old Turkish man had stabbed his wife to death and also committed suicide in Duisburg, while in Meißen, a 15-year-old schoolboy killed his teacher in a stabbing attack.
Immediately after the shooting, on 10 November, German newspapers initially misreported that the perpetrator had become obsessed with Zübeyde's younger sister Esengül, and wrongly referred to the shooter and victims as Kurds.
The survivors of the shooting received psychological care at a hospital and were provided with a fully furnished apartment to stay in to avoid "a return to the bloody place of the incident".