2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting The 2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting occurred on 2 March 2011 at Frankfurt Airport in Germany . The shooter , Arid Uka , was arrested and charged with killing two United States airmen and seriously wounding two others . He was sentenced to life in prison on 10 February 2012 . The shooting was the first deadly attack in Germany with an Islamist background . Shooting . According to the German investigators , Uka targeted a United States Air Force bus parked outside the terminal building that was supposed to transport 15 U . S . airmen to Ramstein Air Base . He reportedly walked up to a waiting airman , asked him for a cigarette , and wanted to know whether the airmen were bound for Afghanistan . When the airman said yes , according to German prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum , Uka waited for the airman to turn away and then shot him in the back of the head , killing him . Shouting " Allahu Akbar ! " the attacker then entered the bus , shooting and killing the driver , and continued to fire three shots at two other airmen , wounding them . When he pointed his pistol at the head of another airman and pulled the trigger , the weapon jammed . Uka fled , but was pursued by the civilian airport employee Lamar Joseph Conner and Staff Sergeant Trevor Donald Brewer and shortly afterwards overpowered by two German police officers . He was subsequently arrested . Killed were Senior Airman Nicholas Alden , 25 , of South Carolina and Airman First Class Zachary Cuddeback , 21 , of Virginia . Staff Sgt . Kristoffer Schneider was shot in the right temple and lost the sight in one eye . The right side of his face had to be rebuilt with titanium , and he suffers head pain and seizures . Part of his skull had to be removed after an infection . Edgar Veguilla was hit in the jaw and arm and suffered nerve damage . Conner and Brewer later received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in a ceremony on 16 January 2012 . Federal Interior Minister Hans - Peter Friedrich presented the decoration , citing their " exemplary courage and action which helped the Federal Police arrest the suspect " . Perpetrator . Arid Uka , the 21 - year - old perpetrator , had not been previously known to German authorities . He was described in media reports as an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo and a devout Muslim , whose family had been living in Germany for 40 years . He had been working at the airport post office . According to German authorities , Uka confessed to the killings when interrogated after the shooting . He reportedly insisted that he had acted alone and was not a member of a terrorist group , but his Facebook page was reported to indicate contacts to Islamists from the Salafist movement , including Sheikh Abdellatif , a noted Moroccan Islamist preacher living in Germany . < ref name = " Der Spiegel / Bartsch 3 March " > < / ref > " Der Spiegel " reported that evidence held by German and United States authorities was claimed to link Uka to Islamist groups in Germany . < ref name = " Der Spiegel / Gebauer 3 March " > < / ref > Uka told investigators that a YouTube video showing American soldiers raping Muslim women motivated him to commit the shooting . The 6 March 2011 edition of the German television show Spiegel TV Magazin identified the video in question as a clip from " Redacted " , an American anti - war film . The interior minister of the federal state of Hesse said that Uka had apparently been radicalised over the past few weeks . Trial . German prosecutors charged Arid Uka with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder . On trial before the " Oberlandesgericht " Frankfurt am Main in August 2011 , Uka confessed to committing the shooting . He said that he was radicalized by jihadist propaganda videos , but apologized for what he did , adding that today he could not understand how he could have acted this way . Uka was sentenced to life in prison on 10 February 2012 . The court found that his guilt was particularly severe , which means that he will not be eligible for parole after having served 15 years .