Man drives into crowd, 1 dead
HEIDELBERG, GERMANY: A man died and two other people were injured after a 35-year-old German man drove into a crowd standing near a bakery in the southwestern town of Heidelberg, but the authorities said there were no indications that it was a terrorist attack.
The 73-year-old man who died in hospital from his injuries was also German. The two other people injured, a 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also received hospital treatment but were then discharged, police and prosecutors said in a statement.
“At the current stage of the investigation there is nothing to suggest that it was a terrorist” act, the police said.
According to the police, the suspect was seen getting out of the car on Saturday with a knife and was later tracked down to an old swimming pool.
Officers had tracked down the driver with help from witnesses and opened fire on the suspect who was “seriously wounded”, police said.
He was taken to a hospital in Heidelberg after being arrested. He has since been operated on but nothing further is known about the current state of his health, the police and prosecutors said.
Regional newspaper RheinNeckar-Zeitung said the suspect was not fit to be questioned. Ger- man daily Bild reported the suspect was suffering from psychiatric troubles, but authorities have made no comment on that claim.
Police spokesman Heiko Kranz said experts were gathering evidence such as DNA traces and fingerprints and examining the contents of the car.
Investigations by the public prosecutors’ office in Heidelberg and the town’s criminal police were continuing, police said.
The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung newspaper said the suspect had stopped at a red traffic light and when it turned green put his foot down before hitting the group of people at high speed and smashing into a pillar.
Authorities are on high alert after a Tunisian drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19, killing 12 people.