Car Rams Into Crowd In Germany, Kills One
A tragic incident unfolded in the western German city of Mannheim on Monday when a car plowed into a crowd, leaving one person dead and several others injured, the police said.
According to the Mannheim police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm, the vehicle, a Black SUV, drove into a group of pedestrians in Paradeplatz.
Wilhelm also announced that a suspect had been taken into custody.
“We can confirm that one perpetrator was arrested,“ he said
“We can’t yet give information on whether there were further perpetrators,” he added.
Witnesses described scenes of panic and chaos. A man dining at a nearby restaurant told local media outlet Welt that he saw people running in fear after the car struck pedestrians.
Paradeplatz, a major square in the downtown area, lies at the end of a pedestrianised street in Mannheim, which has a population of 326,000 and lies 85 kilometers (52 miles) south of Frankfurt.
Car-ramming attacks are not uncommon in Germany; last month, a 2-year-old girl and her mother died two days after they were injured in an attack at a labor union demonstration in Munich.
A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested, while prosecutors said he appeared to have had an Islamic extremist motive.
Last year, six people were killed and more than 200 injured when a car slammed into a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.
The suspect, a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia, was arrested. According to German authorities, the suspect expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.
Car Rams Into Crowd In Germany, Kills One is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
