Massive blow to a German pedestrian: at least 5 dead – News

The driver was identified as a 51-year-old German born in Trier who was arrested at the scene and his vehicle seized by police.

His name was withheld due to the privacy laws governing the country, but prosecutor in charge of the case, Peter Fritzen, revealed he did not have a fixed address and that he lived in the Land Rover truck that a friend had lent him. with which he overwhelmed passers-by.

Fritzen said that although the motive for the attack is unclear, “no terrorist motive has been found,” although he said police were considering “all kinds of hypotheses, from terrorist to religious or to politics.

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In this regard, he stressed that the investigation was ongoing and that the author could be charged with quadruple murder, attempted multiple murder and multiple injuries.

The prosecutor, quoted by news agencies DPA, Sputnik and AFP, said the main suspect is being questioned, although everything indicates that he has no criminal record.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted through her spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, who described the event as “shocking” and offered her support to the relatives of the deceased and the “many” injured, as well as to the teams emergency deployed. .

In a press conference of the Trier city council, the Minister of the Interior of the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger Lewentz, confirmed that four of the injured are in serious condition and regretted that many of those who were in the area remained “traumatized”.

The official said it was a “terrible day for the state” and added that the authorities had carefully analyzed what had happened.

The crash happened around 1:45 p.m. in a downtown market.

The mayor of the city, Wolfram Leibe, condemned the “horror” experienced on Tuesday and sent his condolences to the injured and to the relatives of the victims.

Franz-Dieter Ankner, Deputy Commissioner of Police in Trier, explained that one of the deceased is a nine-month-old baby and considered that the vehicle had been “quickly stopped” and the suspect arrested.

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Security forces estimate that the truck, a 4×4-type SUV, traveled about 900 meters before stopping.

Although no authority has clarified whether it was an accident or an attack, the incident comes four years after an Islamist killed 12 people by hitting large numbers of pedestrians in a market festival of the capital Berlin.

Witnesses said they saw a dark van which made people “fly through the air” by crushing crowds near the main market in Trier, the local Trierische Volksfreund daily reported.

The car crushed parents with their children on its way to the market, which this year has not opened due to the coronavirus, the newspaper said.

Almost four years ago, a truck driven by a radical Tunisian Islamist crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin in an attack that left 12 dead and 56 injured.

The perpetrator of the December 19, 2016 attack was shot dead a few days later in Milan, northern Italy, and hours later, the Islamist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

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In August 2019, six people were injured in Berlin in a series of road incidents that prosecutors characterized as suspected Islamist attacks.

Trier is located 200 kilometers west of Frankfurt, near the border with Luxembourg.

The city of around 110,000 inhabitants and considered the oldest in Germany, is known for its monuments from the Roman era, its cathedral and its Church of Our Lady of Trier, all declared a World Heritage Site.

The city’s iconic monument is the Porta Nigra, a gate erected in Roman times near which today’s incident occurred. Witnesses said the car had moved from Porta Nigra towards the market area.