A 29-year-old man who killed a teacher and injured 14 children after driving his car into a crowd in Berlin on Wednesday had a history of mental health problems and likely intended to kill or injure, German authorities say.
The latest information about the driver had made the incident look like “a rampage by a person with really serious psychological problems,” inner city senator Iris Spranger said in a statement. statement On tuesday night.
Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey told broadcaster RBB on Thursday that police investigators were trying, with the help of a linguistic mediator, “to find out more about the partially confusing statements he is making.” Information pointed to the incident being deliberate, Giffey said.
A teacher was killed and 14 children on a school trip were injured when the German-Armenian driver steered his silver Renault Clio onto the pavement of a busy shopping area at around 10:30am local time (09:30BST) on Wednesday. After driving back onto the main road, he crashed through the window of a cosmetics store.
He fled to a sports store, where shoppers held him until police arrived. A witness told Der Spiegel magazine that the man had been in a state of confusion: “He repeatedly asked for help.”
The accident occurred on Tauentzienstrasse in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district, adjacent to Breitscheidplatz square, where a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist ties drove a hijacked truck into a crowded Christmas market on December 19 2016, killing 12 people and injuring dozens more. Giffey said yesterday’s incident had “opened up deep wounds and trauma”.
Spranger rejected initial reports that a written statement had been found in the driver’s car that could have pointed to a politically or religiously motivated act.
While police found a poster on the car criticizing Turkey for its role in the Armenian genocide during World War I, it was unclear whether it belonged to the driver or his sister, the vehicle’s registered owner.
