(Reuters) — A man drove into a crowd standing by a bakery in the southwestern German town of Heidelberg on Saturday (February 25), killing one and injuring two people, but a police statement said there were no signs that it was a terrorist attack.
Police said a 73-year-old German man died in hospital after being seriously injured and the two other people who were injured – a 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina – received hospital treatment but were later discharged.
The suspect was seen getting out of the car with a knife and was later tracked down near a swimming pool. He is now in a hospital in Heidelberg having been shot by police while being arrested, leaving him seriously injured, police said.
“As yet nothing is known about the background or motivation for his behaviour. We also don’t know what his present state of health is. We know that he is being treated, and that he is seriously injured, but I cannot tell you what the present medical diagnosis is,” said Heiko Kranz, police spokesman for Manheim police.
Investigations by the public prosecutors’ office in Heidelberg and the criminal police from Heidelberg and Mannheim were continuing, police said.
“Obviously we are securing the evidence, you can see here in the background that criminologists are at work, who will find all sort of DNA and finger prints in the car. Then the identity of the man will play a roll. If he is fit to be interrogated, then he will be questioned about his behaviour, so that we can discover more information. And obviously we will investigate everything that happened before and after the attack,” Kranz said.
Regional newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung said he was not fit to be questioned.
The newspaper cited police as saying the suspect was a young German man and that 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.
The German authorities are on high alert after a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.