(Berlin) One person was killed and eight others were injured in a car crash Wednesday in a busy artery in Berlin, and his motive remains unknown, authorities say.
Released at 6:13 p.m.
Updated at 8:38 p.m.
Rescue workers estimated that “more than a dozen people were injured,” five of whom were “between life and death” and three were “seriously injured,” firefighters said. All were taken to hospital.
Photo by ODD Anderson, Agencies France-Press
The metal-gray Renault Cleo crashed into a perfume shop window at 10:30 a.m. (4:30 p.m. EDT), causing a stir in the business and tourist district, located near the zoo in the west of the capital. In 2016 Ram was hit by a truck attack.
Berlin police say they do not currently know if this was a deliberate act or a loss of control of the vehicle or “perhaps even a medical emergency”.
A Home Ministry spokesman underlined that “the investigation is ongoing and it is too early to speculate on the motives for this act.”
Its teacher was attacked by passersby and later arrested by police, police official Thilo Cablitz said. He is a 29-year-old German-Armenian.
About 130 police officers, along with 80 firefighters, guarded the road and conducted on-site maintenance and interviewed witnesses at the scene.
In a window
The driver first hit a group of passers-by 150 to 200m “before continuing his race” and then finished “in a window”, Mr. Coblitz said.
“I was sitting near the fountain when I heard a loud noise and saw a person flying in the air,” Witness Frank Whitsen told AFP.
The driver “went fast on the sidewalk, but he did not put the brakes”, and then “he ran back to the road,” he added.
Another witness, who refused to give his identity, said the AFP had promised to run into a “group of students between the ages of 15 and 16” before lighting a red light and continuing his race. “At high speed”.
Photo by FABRIZIO BENSCH, REUTERS
According to several media outlets, the deceased was the teacher who accompanied the group. Within hours of the tragedy, a body covered in blue and white blankets lay on the road, AFP journalists found.
The Renault Cleo, registered in Berlin, was also spotted, embedded in the shop window, and the passenger door opened.
Amazement
Like the German government, Berlin’s Social Democrat Mayor Francisco Kifi said he was “deeply saddened” by the facts.
They took place near the Memorial Church, a major monument in the western part of the German capital, located in Kஃrferstentum, one of Berlin’s busiest shopping streets.
On December 19, 2016, 12 people were killed in an attack by an Islamist ram truck on a Christmas market located at the foot of the church.
Many car-roaming attacks in Germany in recent years have been carried out by speeders suffering from psychological disorders.
One of the most serious was performed in April 2018 in Munster. A man drove a minivan into a crowd gathered in front of a restaurant, killing five of them and shooting himself.
In December 2020, a 51-year-old drunk and mentally ill driver killed five people, including a child, and seriously injured 14 when he entered a pedestrian area in Trier just before Christmas.
In 2020, in Volksmarsen, a municipality in the Hesse region (west), a 30-year-old German entered a crowd during a festival parade and injured about 100 people.
