Berlin Senator for the Interior: “Amoktat of a mentally handicapped person”


Dhe area around the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is cordoned off with a red and white ribbon. Police officers ensure that nobody enters the area. Ambulances from the fire brigade drive away with flashing lights and sirens. Dozens of police vehicles are parked on Tauentzienstrasse, a popular shopping street in western Berlin where Kurfürstendamm flows. The Zoo train station and the KaDeWe department store are very close by. It’s twelve o’clock in the afternoon. An hour and a half ago, at 10:26 a.m., a car drove into a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk. It was a group of schoolchildren visiting Berlin.

According to the police’s current knowledge, 14 students were injured, five or six of them life-threateningly, three others seriously – all were taken to the city’s hospitals. But for a woman any help came too late, she died at the scene. It is a 51-year-old teacher from Bad Arolsen in the Hessian district of Waldeck-Frankenberg. She had gone to Berlin with a tenth grader. The seriously and life-threateningly injured are mainly schoolchildren, including a teacher.

After the fatal incident, the police, with the support of a special task force, searched the driver’s home. A police spokeswoman for the German Press Agency confirmed the operation in the Charlottenburg district, which the “Bild” newspaper had previously reported on. The police also had contact with the driver’s sister, it said. According to dpa information from police circles, the suspect should be mentally disturbed. The Berlin Senator for the Interior, Iris Spranger, also wrote on Twitter shortly before 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening: “According to the latest information, today’s events on Tauentzienstrasse are an amok act by a mentally handicapped person.”

Passersby held the driver

According to the police, the driver of the car is a 29-year-old German-Armenian who lives in Berlin. He drove into the group on the sidewalk in a small car, a silver-colored Renault Clio – apparently at high speed, eyewitnesses report. This happened on the corner of Tauentzienstraße and Rankestraße opposite the Memorial Church. Then the man drove almost 200 meters further to Marburger Straße, steered the vehicle onto the sidewalk again, touched another car until he crashed his car into the window of a perfumery shop, where he came to a stop. The car was then partly in the branch of the Douglas chain, partly on the sidewalk. There were no other injuries in the store.

The man, according to police spokesman Thilo Calbitz at the Memorial Church, was initially held by passers-by. A policeman who was nearby was able to arrest him. The suspect was taken away in handcuffs. He received medical treatment but could be questioned. After the incident, he made a confused impression, eyewitnesses reported. According to the “Tagesspiegel” the man is called Gor H., he is said to live with his sister in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Because the driver had no papers with him, he was initially treated by the federal police at the zoo and later taken to a hospital. He is said to have been known to the police for theft.

Several people who experienced the incident directly and are in shock are being cared for by emergency paramedics on Wednesday afternoon and cared for by pastors in the Memorial Church. The police are also interviewing witnesses there. It is deployed with 130 forces, the fire brigade with around 100 people. White tents have been erected at the place where the car hit the people. There, experts from the criminal police and the traffic accident service secure traces in order to reconstruct the course of events.

The police suspected a rampage

The police initially considered an act of terrorism to be unlikely, they suspected a rampage. However, documents and posters were found in the car that contained statements about Turkey, Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) said in the evening. It is not a real letter of confession, which was initially reported. The exact motivation of the driver still has to be investigated, it will be determined in all directions.

At first the thought of a terrorist attack seemed obvious. On December 19, 2016, one of the most serious attacks in Germany took place just a few meters from the scene of the incident – ​​on the opposite side of the Memorial Church. At that time, an Islamist assassin drove a truck into the Christmas market at the Memorial Church. 13 people lost their lives and more than 70 were injured, some seriously.

But Berlin also experienced a terrible accident that had a medical cause three years ago. In September 2019, a man with his heavy car left the road on Invalidenstrasse in the Mitte district. The car rolled over, killing four people, a three-year-old and his grandmother, and two young men, on the sidewalk. The driver suffered an epileptic seizure. Despite his illness and brain surgery just a month before the accident, he had been driving. In February 2022, he was given a two-year suspended sentence.

The Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) gets an idea of ​​the situation on Wednesday afternoon. She promised support to those affected. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the federal government and the Hessian state government are also dismayed. A prayer service is planned for the evening in the Memorial Church.



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