Guman kills 7 in Belgium

The New York Times

May 13, 1987

BRUSSELS, May 12 - A gunman killed seven people, including a child and five members of one family, before being found dead in his car today. The police said the man, found near the southern town of Mons, apparently shot himself. They gave no further details.

The man shot dead five members of a family and wounded a sixth person at a farm in Pepingen. He then followed and killed a witness and her 3-year-old son before fleeing by car. The identity of the gunman and the reason for the killings was unknown.

Gunman kills himself after belgian massacre

The Times

May 13, 1987

A man who killed seven people and seriously injured three more in Belgium killed himself last night when police carrying out a huge manhunt stopped his car. Michel Van Wijnendaele, who had injured his own parents-in-law when he ran amok in the small farming community of Bogaarden, south of Brussels, shot himself as police tried to get him to surrender.

Three generations were wiped out when Van Wijnendaele, aged 28, broke into a farmhouse killing a 90-year-old man and his wife, aged 84. He also killed a middle-aged couple and one son aged 20. Another son, who was 24, was seriously injured with a bullet in his stomach and another in his shoulder and was last night in a serious condition in a Brussels hospital.

The killer left the house, but seeing a woman and her three-year-old son outside a neighbouring farmhouse, killed them, too. Police believe the gunman feared they might recognize him. Police roadblocks were thrown up around the area, in an attempt to cordon it off before the man could escape. But about four hours later Van Wijnendaele attacked another farmhouse at Denderwindeke, near Aalost, shooting and seriously injured a middle-aged couple who identified him as their own son-in-law.

Police units round the country were then put on alert in the hunt for the killer, who escaped in a blue Opel car. Police did not know the motive for yesterday's farmhouse killings, but the spokesman said: "We think he was a bit of a lunatic." They dismissed any connection with the supermarket murders in Aalost in 1985, when masked gunmen mowed down innocent shoppers in an apparently motiveless but well-organized attack.