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police officer at the crime scene
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Fabian Sommer / dpa
It happened again at Breitscheidplatz, and it was apparently another deliberate bloody crime with a vehicle: Gor H.'s fatal drive on Wednesday in Berlin reminded many of the devastating terrorist attack in 2016 - even if it is now becoming apparent that H In contrast to terrorist Anis Amri, he probably did not act as a politically and religiously motivated extremist.
The fact
The rampage went hundreds of meters before ending in a shop window at the corner of Tauentzienstrasse and Marburger Strasse.
The perpetrator had previously driven into a school class from Hesse on the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Rankestraße.
She was on a class trip in Berlin, and any help came too late for one of the group's teachers.
According to investigators, she died on the spot.
Your colleague was seriously injured.
According to the public prosecutor, seven young people from the group of students were taken to hospital for treatment with serious injuries, and seven other students were slightly injured.
17 passers-by were also wounded.
Dozens needed psychological care.
H. was driving his sister's car when he drove there. He has a German and an Armenian passport.
He is said to have been registered in Berlin for more than ten years, most recently on the third floor of a residential building in the Charlottenburg-Nord district.
Two posters were found in the van: handwritten, with a "very distant reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," according to the spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor's office, Sebastian Büchner.
However, the public prosecutor's office rules out a terrorist background.
H. acted intentionally, but there are signs of paranoid schizophrenia.
When the man's apartment was searched, the investigators finally found medication, and the doctors treating him were released from their duty of confidentiality.
The prosecution now wants to have the man admitted to a psychiatric ward.
The Tiergarten District Court has now issued a corresponding placement order.
Further investigations should now show whether the illness was the cause of the crime.
The victims
Many belonged to the group of students who were on their graduation trip.
In their home in Bad Arolsen, 16,000 inhabitants, located in the rural district of Waldeck-Frankenberg, the dismay is great.
Although there are lessons at the Kaulbach school, the students are said to have mostly gone to school quietly and almost devoutly.
“It is important for the school community to calm down and process what has happened,” says the spokeswoman for the district.
The school website is offline.
In front of the yellow and white building of the junior high school in the center of the small town there are candles and flowers in memory of the teacher who was killed and the injured.
There are also police officers on the school grounds.
"It's sad," said a passer-by to the dpa news agency.
The act reminded her of Volkmarsen.
In 2020, a man in the small Hessian town intentionally drove his car into the Rose Monday train.
Volkmarsen is just under ten kilometers away.
By Thursday, 17 of the students had returned home, some with their parents.
Seven others and a teacher were still being treated in Berlin hospitals.
The investigations
Gor H. was known to the police, but only for minor things like assault and trespassing.
They didn't know anything about political and extremist acts, said Berlin's Senator for the Interior, Iris Spranger (SPD).
"The suspect has not yet been noticed in connection with anti-constitutional efforts either."
With the help of an interpreter, the investigators tried to "find out more from the sometimes confused statements he made," as Berlin's governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) said on RBB Inforadio.
The man's computer and mobile phone would be evaluated, said Interior Senator Spranger in the House of Representatives.
A homicide commission and not the state security has taken over the investigation.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the acts are legally classified as murder and attempted murder.
The sympathy
The news of the rampage has touched many people deeply, not only in Berlin and Bad Arolsen.
The Hessian Prime Minister Boris Rhein visited the school of the affected class.
The fact made everyone stunned, said the CDU politician.
Rhein promised pastoral and financial help.
Berlin's Mayor Giffey described the act as a "dark day in the history of Berlin".
The House of Representatives is thinking of the relatives of those killed, said the President of the House of Representatives, Dennis Buchner (SPD).
"We fear and hope for the injured."
Interior Senator Spranger ordered mourning flags to be displayed.
The Berlin Senate also announced that it would support those affected and their relatives with a central contact point located at the Senate Department for Justice.
This provides advice and assistance, it said.
Justice Senator Lena Kreck (left) promised: "We have learned from the events that followed the terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz and will not let those affected and victims down."
apr/dpa/AFP/Reuters
