Police killed a masked man who stormed a German movie theater Thursday afternoon and was believed to have fired shots and taken hostages, authorities said.
The unidentified man was killed after police commandoes gathered around the the Kinopolis complex in Viernheim, about 40 miles south of Frankfurt, following reports that shots had been fired inside, police said.
“The police thought that the gunman was holding hostages and because of that he was shot dead,” Hessen State Interior Minister Peter Beuth told local lawmakers.
Beuth said it wasn’t clear whether the weapon was real.
The incident evoked the July 2012 incident in Aurora, Colo., in which James Holmes killed 12 and wounded dozens at a screening of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.”