A 45-year-old man, identified as Fatih Khan G. and described as Turkish, shot and killed six employees at a youth welfare facility in Stade on Monday. New details reveal that 65-year-old Sylvia S. of Bremen was behind the wheel of the getaway car, with the woman working as a “migration consultant” for a nationwide advocacy organization within Germany’s migration policy sector, according to Nius news outlet.
The vehicle used to flee the mass shooting was a Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupé with nearly 400 horsepower. The vehicle was registered in Sylvia S.’s name on May 26, 2026, about five weeks before the shooting that rocked the nation.
🇩🇪🔴BREAKING: The perpetrator who shot and killed 6 people was born in Germany but has Turkish roots.
Police say the motive was a custody battle over his baby.
All the deceased were employees of the Youth Welfare Office in Stade. According to NDR, the father is said to be from… pic.twitter.com/HE40NhPFJM
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 29, 2026Sylvia S.’s organization “advises on issues such as family reunification, residency rights, and naturalization, and describes itself as representing the interests of migrant families and opposing racism,” according to Nius.
Settling migrants, advocating for migrants, and “fighting” racism are massive industries in Germany awash in taxpayer money. Sylvia’s organization was no different. For 2025 and 2026 alone, the organization received nearly €900,000 in taxpayer funding through the federal NGO program “Demokratie leben!” (“Democracy Live!”).
The entire shooting, which killed six youth welfare office employees, was over a custody dispute regarding Fatih Khan G.’s three-month-old baby. Sylvia S. has now told authorities she is the godmother of the three-month-old baby at the center of a custody battle.
In early April, the infant was treated first at Hannover Medical School and later at a children’s hospital on suspicion of shaken baby syndrome. That prompted an investigation into the father — one that, investigators now say, was already open and ongoing before the shooting took place.
Three days before the attack, Sylvia S. reportedly sent a roughly 20-page letter, titled “Chronicle of a Nightmare,” to several media outlets, according to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) and RTL. In it, she raised objections to what she described as contradictions, inconsistencies, and inadequate medical documentation in the case. She argued that the baby’s injuries were not the result of shaking but of an accidental collision in bed. She also claimed that the father had struck his head against the infant’s while half asleep.
According to the letter, the father, who Sylvia would later drive away from the shooting, allegedly went so far as to try to block the child’s emergency surgery through police intervention.
Doctors subsequently filed a complaint against him due to aggressive behavior. The youth welfare office ultimately took the baby into protective custody. A family court later allowed the child to return to the mother, but only at the facility in Stade, not in Hanover.
On Monday, there was supposed to be a protective custody hearing in Stade and Sylvia S. drove the father to the appointment. According to investigators, he suddenly pulled out a firearm he had brought with him and opened fire on staff. Five victims died at the scene; a sixth later succumbed to injuries in the hospital. Investigators have since described the attack as an “extremely cold-blooded act of violence.”
After the shooting, the father and Sylvia S. fled together in the Mercedes. Several kilometers from the crime scene, a tire on the getaway car blew out on the B73 highway, allowing emergency responders to catch up with the vehicle and arrest both occupants.
The German outlet t-online reported that a second woman was also taken into custody in connection with the case, but there are conflicting reports on whether this second female existed.
Prosecutors did not seek pretrial detention for either of the two women, and both were subsequently released from police custody. Sylvia S. was questioned before her release. The shooter remains in pretrial detention.
It remains unclear if Sylvia S. was aware the shooting would take place and if she was aiding him in fleeing the scene. Authorities say they are withholding further details from the public for investigative and tactical reasons, as well as to protect the victims and their families.
