School horror plot man's 'macabre interest' in Dunblane gunman

Former classmates, teachers and police on hit list, jury told

- TED HENNESSY

A GUNMAN who built firearms and explosives for a planned “revenge” attack on ex-classmates before he was shot by police had a “macabre interest” in Dunblane shooter Thomas Hamilton, a court heard. 

Warehouse worker Reed Wischhusen, 32, of Wick St Lawrence, Somerset, allegedly wrote of a “hitman-style attack” on 10 people in which he would shoot dead teachers, throw bombs at his former school and kill police staff.

The “infamy” of Hamilton – who committed the worst mass shooting in UK history at Dunblane Primary School – “seemingly appealed” to the defendant, the prosecutor said.

Evil Hamilton shot dead 16 pupils and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, in March 1996 before killing himself.

Jonathan Rees KC, opening the trial, said: “Over a sustained period of time, Mr Wischhusen, who had a macabre interest in infamous killers such as Thomas Hamilton of Dunblane and Raoul Moat in the UK, and the ‘cop hater’ Ralph McLean in the US, and also in mass shootings and bombings such as the Columbine shooting and the

Oklahoma bombing, set about attempting unlawfully to build – in his own words – a ‘small armoury ’ of firearms and explosives.”