Death Hunt in Trier – Germans run into the pedestrian zone in SUVs – at least five dead



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Authorities see no evidence of a terrorist or political motive in the very drunk driver, but evidence of a psychiatric illness. There is also a child among the victims.

The police are on the spot with a large number.

The police are on the spot with a large number.

Photo: Harald Title (DPA / AP / Keystone)

On Tuesday afternoon, a dark gray SUV drove through the pedestrian zone of Trier for several hundred meters. According to witnesses, the driver intentionally drove people not far from the famous Porta Nigra, a Roman city gate, and left a trail of devastation.

Witnesses reported that people were thrown into the air “Friend of the people of Trier”. Crime scene images showed broken chairs, battered strollers, stalls, and people begging for help.

The driver was drunk and had lived a long time in the car

The police forces managed to arrest the driver not far from the pedestrian zone – only four minutes after the first alarm. The man resisted.

Authorities announced at a press conference that evening that the author was a 51-year-old German who grew up in Trier and lived here. There is no evidence of a terrorist, political or religious motive in his case – there are signs of a possible mental illness.

According to the “Trierischer Volksfreund”, the man often got drunk in the local kebab shop. After his death in the car, the driver measured 1.4 per million of alcohol in his blood. According to authorities, he recently had no permanent residence but lived in a car. He was not known to the police as a criminal or as a so-called threat.

He killed a child and a pensioner

His mad rush killed at least five people: a 9-week-old boy, a 25-year-old woman and a 52-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man and a 73-year-old retiree. There are also 4 seriously injured, 5 seriously injured, 6 lightly injured and at least two dozen severely traumatized people.

The city center of Trier, the oldest city in Germany, was subsequently demarcated. Dozens of emergency vehicles and ambulances blocked the streets and emergency services took care of the victims. Two helicopters hovered in the sky.

The mayor of Trier, Wolfram Leibe (SPD), said shortly after that it had been a “fury”. In an impromptu press conference, he cried when he described what he had seen in the pedestrian street: “I just walked through the city center and it was just terrible. There’s a girl’s sneaker and the girl is dead. “In the evening he said that Trier had experienced the” blackest day since the Second World War “.

Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate Malu Dreyer (SPD) expressed his horror at the fatal accident. The day was “a really bad and terrible day for the relatives,” Dreyer said in Trier. Let his thoughts go to the wounded and seriously injured, and he hopes and prays that they will survive and recover.

The latest case wasn’t until February

In Germany, cars have deliberately raced through crowds several times over the past four years. In February, a 29-year-old German drove his car in a carnival parade in the Hessian city of Volkmarsen targeted children. More than 100 people were injured, including more than 20 children. As if by chance, no one was killed. Investigators ruled out a political motive. The author remains silent about his act to this day and apparently barely works with his lawyer or psychologist.

On New Year’s Eve 2018/19, a right-wing radical drove his car to celebrate people in the Ruhr area who he thought were foreigners and injured a total of 14 of them. The culprit was finally admitted to closed psychiatry. In April 2018, a man in Münster drove a motor home to a roadside café and killed four people. Then he shot himself and the police classified the offender as mentally ill and the incident as a prolonged suicide.

In December 2016, an Islamist attacker ran into a Berlin Christmas market with a truck. 12 people lost their lives and a dozen were injured.

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