This tragic couple had their lives cut short when a disgruntled former Jehovah’s Witness shot up a Kingdom Hall in Germany.
Victims Marie and James were among seven killed in cold blood when gunman Philipp Fusz stormed the place of worship in the city of Hamburg on 9th March.
The 35-year-old management consultant fired 135 shots in total, killing four men and two women aged 33 to 60, as well the unborn baby of one of the women.
Then, he turned his legally-owned Heckler & Koch P30 semi-automatic handgun on himself.
A family member of the killed couple, both aged 29, told local media: “We are deeply affected.”
A friend added: “They both had their whole lives ahead of them. It’s such an unbelievable emptiness. You just don’t want to realise they’re gone.”
Marie enjoyed rollerskating and was a nature lover, local media reported.
She had been with James for 10 years and the couple had married in a wedding.
In addition to the dead, eight were injured in the mass shooting, four critically.
Fusz’s killing spree remains under investigation.
Chief Public Prosecutor Liddy Oechtering said: “The proceedings have been taken over by the State Security Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“The background is that the suspected motive is seen in the area of religious ideology.”
Police chief Ralf Martin Meyer earlier stated that the suspect harboured “a particular anger against religious followers, especially against Jehovah’s Witnesses and against his former employer”.
Some have claimed that a 306-page book he self-published in December led to his expulsion from the church.
In the book, titled ‘The Truth About God, Jesus Christ and Satan: A New Reflected View of Epochal Dimensions’, Fusz interprets the Russian invasion of Ukraine as God’s cleansing of Ukrainian sex workers.
