LThe suspect’s motives remain unknown at this time. A person was killed on Wednesday by a car that knocked down several passers-by. The driver was arrested. 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”. All were taken to hospital.
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 vehicle, a metallic gray Renault Clio, crashed into the window of a perfume store around 10:30 a.m., causing a stir in this commercial and tourist district located near the zoological garden, west of the capital, hit in 2016 by a ram truck attack.
Police arrested the driver, a 29-year-old German-Armenian, but say they do not know at this stage whether he acted intentionally. “We have so far 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 tweeted that “according to the latest information”, the act seems to have been “committed by a person suffering from mental disorders”.
“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. Its author was overpowered by passers-by and then arrested by the police, said a police official, Thilo Cablitz, on the spot. He is a 29-year-old German-Armenian. Some 130 police officers were deployed to the scene, along with 80 firefighters, securing the roadway, providing on-site care and interviewing witnesses.
The suspect ends his race “in a window”
The driver first hit a group of passers-by “before continuing his race” for about 150 to 200 meters, then finishing it “in a window”, said Thilo Cablitz. “I was sitting near the fountain and I heard a loud noise, then I saw a person fly through the air” after being hit by the car, a witness told Agence France-Presse, Frank Vittchen. The driver “left at high speed on the sidewalk, but he did not brake”, then “he returned to the road and fled”, he added.
Another witness, who refused to give his identity, assured Agence France-Presse that he had run into “a group of students” aged “15 to 16” before running a red light and continue his race “at an excessive speed”.
According to several media, the deceased victim is a teacher who accompanied this group. A body covered with blue and white blankets was lying on the road in the hours following the tragedy, AFP journalists found. The Renault Clio, registered in Berlin, was also visible, embedded in the store window, passenger door open.
Berlin mayor ‘deeply upset’
The facts aroused astonishment, with the social-democratic mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, saying she was “deeply upset”, as was the German government. They took place near the Memorial Church, a landmark monument in the western part of the German capital, located on one of Berlin’s busiest shopping streets, the Kurfürstendamm. It is also there that, on December 19, 2016, an Islamist attack with a ram truck killed 12 people on a Christmas market set up at the foot of the church.