Investigators were yesterday to question a driver who allegedly rammed a car into a crowd in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, killing two people and injuring 11.
Andreas Stenger, head of the State Criminal Police Office, told German news agency DPA that police hoped the interview would lead to information about a motive for Monday’s attack. Mourners left flowers in the city’s center to honor the victims.
The suspect is a 40-year-old German man from the nearby state of Rhineland-Palatinate who was detained and is in a hospital after being injured, State Minister of the Interior Minister Thomas Strobl of Baden-Wurttemberg, which includes Mannheim, told DPA on Monday.
Photo: AFP
Strobl later told reporters in Mannheim that “as far as the specific motivation of the crime is concerned, we have no indication of an extremist or religious background at the moment. The motivation could rather be based in the person of the perpetrator himself.”
German police and prosecutors told a joint news conference on Monday that the driver intentionally rammed his car into people and is being investigated for murder and attempted murder. Five of the 11 injured were seriously wounded.
Police and prosecutors said the driver shot himself in the mouth when he was arrested and had to undergo medical treatment at a hospital.
While the driver did not seem to be ideologically motivated, prosecutors said the man, whose identity was not revealed in line with German privacy rules, has several previous convictions.
He served a short prison sentence for assault more than 10 years ago, and was convicted for drunken driving. He had also been investigated for a hate speech offense on Facebook in 2018, for which he was fined, prosecutors said, without giving further details.
Investigators are also looking into the possibility that the driver might suffer from psychological problems.
Cars have been used as deadly weapons in several acts of violence in recent months in Germany.
Police said earlier that “indications of a second perpetrator cannot be confirmed at this stage of the investigation.” They said there was no more danger to the public.
Police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm said a vehicle drove into people on Paradeplatz, a pedestrian street downtown, around noon, when workers come out for lunchbreaks.
Local media reported a carnival market was taking place, meaning more visitors than usual in Mannheim, which has a population of 326,000.
Mannheim University Hospital said they were treating three people, two adults and a child, dpa reported.
The other wounded people were taken to different hospitals in the region.
Images from the scene showed parts of the downtown area cordoned off, with a heavy police presence. Officers gathered round a badly damaged black car.
Friedrich Merz, who likely would become Germany’s next chancellor, wrote on X that “the incident — as well as the terrible acts of the past few months — is an urgent reminder that we must do everything we can to prevent such acts.”
Outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X that “we mourn with the families of the victims of a senseless act of violence.”
Last month, a two-year-old girl and her mother died two days after they were injured in a car-ramming attack on a union demonstration in Munich. A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested, and prosecutors said he appeared to have an Islamic extremist motive.
Last year, six people were killed and more than 200 injured when a car slammed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. The suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative For Germany party.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS