A 74-year-old gunman killed a top official in the northern German town of Hamelin on Friday before shooting himself dead, police said.
Shots were heard shortly after 10am in the city's main administrative building, where 63-year-old Butte was later found dead along with the body of his assailant.
The attacker was not identified. Police refused to comment on media speculation that the shooter was a gun fanatic but did say that the suspect was known to officers in the area. He used a heavy-calibered revolver to shoot Butte.
Butte was married with two adult children and five grandchildren, according to his profile on the district website. By Friday afternoon, his personal website had been taken off line.
Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement that Butte's murder had left him stunned. ?He will be missed by everyone. My thoughts go to his wife and children.?
He served as a police officer, rising through the ranks to become the head of the State Crime Investigations Office of Lower Saxony from 2001 to 2005. He had served as district administrator of Hamelin-Pyrmont, an elected office, since 2005.
The town is best known for the folk tale of the Pied Piper, later popularised by the Brothers Grimm.
Gun violence is rare in Germany, although major massacres in Erfurt in 2002 and Winnenden in 2009 made headlines around the world.
Gun crime, never high in Germany when compared with many other countries, dropped considerably over the past decade ? in 2000, police registered 19,400 crimes in which involved a firearm. By 2011, this figure stood at 11,700.
Of the 2011 statistics, 5,600 were shootings and 132 were incidents in which a gun was involved in a murder, manslaughter or assisted suicide investigation.
AFP/DPA/The Local/jcw
Source: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130426-49387.html
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