One person was killed and eight others seriously injured when a car hit passers-by on Wednesday in a busy Berlin thoroughfare. The driver, whose motives are unknown, was arrested, authorities said.
The rescuers counted “more than a dozen injured”, five of whom are “between life and death” and three others are “seriously injured”, according to the firefighters. All were taken to hospital.
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.
Berlin police said they don’t know at this stage whether it was an intentional act or a loss of control of the vehicle or “perhaps even a medical emergency”.
“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.
In a window
The driver first hit a group of passers-by ‘before continuing his race’ for regarding 150 to 200 m and then ending it ‘in a window’, said Mr. Cablitz.
“I was sitting near the fountain and I heard a loud noise, then I saw a person flying through the air” following being hit by the car, witness Frank Vittchen told AFP.
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 AFP that he had run into ‘a group of students’ aged ’15 to 16′ before running a red light and continuing his race ‘at 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.
Stupefaction
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 located at the foot of the church.
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.
/ATS
