The unexplained gesture of a 29-year-old driver who ran into passers-by on Wednesday in a central artery of Berlin caused the death of a teacher and injured several students who were on a school trip in the German capital The vehicle, a Renault Clio metallic gray, came to fit around 10:30 a.m. in the window of a perfumery, after having struck a group of pedestrians, not far from the places where a deadly attack on a ram truck took place in 2016.
The crowd was great at this time of day in this commercial and tourist district located near the zoological garden, in the west of the capital. The toll is heavy: a teacher was killed and the emergency services counted “more than a dozen injured” six of whom were still “between life and death” on Wednesday evening. Three other people are “seriously injured”.
Among the injured are teenagers from the Land of Hesse (west) on a school trip to Berlin, according to the authorities of this regional state. In addition to the deceased teacher, another of their teachers was seriously injured.
The driver suffers from “psychological disorders”
Police arrested the driver, a 29-year-old German-Armenian, but say they do not know at this stage whether he acted intentionally. “We currently have no tangible evidence of a political act,” said Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik at the end of the day.
In the evening, a representative of the Berlin administration, Iris Spranger indicated on Twitter that “according to the latest information”, the act seems to have been “committed by a person suffering from mental disorders”. Reports of the discovery of a claim letter in the vehicle have been denied. Writings containing remarks “about Turkey” were however discovered in the car, according to Ms Spranger. “The investigation is ongoing and it is too early to speculate on the motives” of the act, said a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior.
The driver slammed into passers-by “before continuing his run” for about 150 to 200 yards and then ending it in the window, police said.
I saw a person fly through the air
“I was sitting near the fountain and I heard a big noise, then I saw a person flying in the air (crushed by the car)”, told AFP on the spot a witness, Frank Vittchen. . “He left at high speed on the sidewalk but he did not brake. Then he got back on the road and fled,” he added.
Numerous police and firefighters were deployed to the scene, also located just off the square where, on December 19, 2016, an Islamist ram truck attack on a Christmas market killed 12 people.
Several car-ramming attacks have been carried out in Germany in recent years by drivers suffering from psychological disorders.
One of the most serious was perpetrated in April 2018 in Münster. A man drove a mini-van into a group of people gathered in front of a restaurant, killing five of them, before shooting himself dead.
In December 2020, a 51-year-old drunk and psychotic driver killed five people, including a baby, and seriously injured 14 others when he drove into a pedestrian area in Trier just before Christmas.
In Volksmarsen, a municipality in the Hesse region (west), also in 2020, a 30-year-old German injured a hundred people by rushing into the crowd during a carnival parade.