Munich shooting victims: Mother, teens among the 9 killed

Two days after a gunman slaughtered nine people in Munich, Haci Dag and his sons sat dazed outside their family home, trying to grasp the enormity of what happened to their family.

They’re grieving the death of Sevda Dag, Haci’s wife and the mother of sons Sedat and Koray. The gunman shot her in the head as he strode out of the McDonald’s restaurant near the Olympia shopping mall on Friday night.

Sevda’s husband spent all of Friday night racing from hospital to hospital in an increasingly desperate search for her. He eventually returned home with no answer.

“I had a bad feeling when a colleague told me about what happened at the shopping center,” he said. “She was there with her friends.”

Early the next morning, the police came to his door to tell him his wife had been killed.

That was the last contact Haci had with the police, he said. There have been no phone calls from local authorities or the German government.

Searching for answers

Sevda, 45, was the oldest of the nine victims. Her family – Germans of Turkish origin – live in a gray, nondescript building in suburban Munich.

A Turkish flag hangs from the window of their apartment. Friends and relatives gathered outside to offer their support near a table of Turkish sweets and drinks for everyone to share.

One neighbor recalled Sevda as a happy and friendly woman. “She was full of joy,” the neighbor said.

Now, the family’s grief is tainted with frustration and anger.

“I didn’t even get a letter of condolences from the local authorities – nothing,” Haci said.

Instead, he said he received a call from the Turkish foreign minister and from the Turkish consul in Munich – who had delivered a letter of condolence from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He finds the contrast in responses ironic.

“I am German citizen,” Haci said.

The family members said they have not been allowed to see Sevda’s body and said they feel abandoned. Sevda’s brother-in-law held up a piece of paper with the name of the morgue where her body rests.

“That’s where she is, they tell us,” the brother-in-law said. “But no one is letting us see her.”

Her 19-year-old son Sedat said he’s angry about the way police handled the shooting’s aftermath.

“We spent hours at the scene trying to find our mother,” Sedat said. “All we heard was, ‘no information.’”

And they have bigger questions.

“We want to know what happened,” Haci told CNN. “How does an 18-year-old get a weapon? Why did no one realize that he had a weapon?”

German prosecutors have said the Glock pistol used by the gunman had been bought on the “dark web” from the Czech Republic.

The Dag family and some of their friends refuse to believe that he acted on his own.

“We are frustrated,” said Fahrettin Izce, Sedat’s best friend who viewed Sevda as a second mother. “But even if we learn about what happened, it’s not going to bring her back.”

Families unite in grief, support

At the makeshift memorial outside the shopping mall, friends and families of the victims stand together – hugging each other and shaking their heads in disbelief.

Strangers who never knew the victims have also visited the memorial by the hundreds, laying flowers and lighting candles.

Gulcan is the neighbor of 17-year-old Hüseyin Daitzik, a Greek boy of Turkish origin. “He was a such a kind boy,” she said with tears running down her face.

Most of those killed on Friday were teenagers. Armela Segashi was just 14.

Her brother Arbnor posted on Facebook in German and Albanian: “Our beloved daughter, sister, friend and in the first place a beloved human has died in the rampage in Munich. We love you Angel.”

Dijamant Zabergja was a 21 year-old Albanian. His father held up a picture of his son at the memorial site.

Zabergja’s friends wrote tributes and shared their grief on Facebook. “Never will I see you laugh again, never will I be able to talk to you again,” one friend wrote. “No one can bring you back to me.”