BERLIN — A car rammed into a crowd of people in Berlin on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring a dozen others, police said. Five ...
BERLIN — A car rammed into a crowd of people in Berlin on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring a dozen others, police said. Five of the victims have life-threatening injuries, a fire department spokesperson said.
Police arrested the driver of the car and opened an investigation to determine whether the crash was accidental or intentional.
“Part of the reconstruction of the event, of course, is to consider to what extent it was an intentional act or a traffic accident that could have occurred due to an exceptional medical situation. “, said Thilo Cablitz, spokesman for the Berlin police. journalists on site.
Mr Cablitz, who confirmed the death toll, said bystanders apprehended the driver, who has not yet been identified. He was later taken into custody by police, who do not know of any motive at this time, Mr Cablitz said.
The said the police on Twitter that 130 rescuers were on site.
“The crime scene extends over two blocks, about 200 to 300 meters,” said Adrian Wentzel, spokesman for the Berlin Fire Department.
The accident happened at 10:26 a.m. on a street in a busy shopping district in the west of the German capital, according to initial police reports. The driver first drove onto a sidewalk and into a crowd, then returned to the street, only to return to the sidewalk and in front of a store, according to reports.
According to reports and photographs taken at the scene, the car, a Berlin-registered Renault Clio, stopped moving after crashing into the store window.
The police used Twitter to ask the witnesses video recordings or photographs to aid in the investigation. They also asked witnesses not to broadcast images of the investigation.
Several fire engines and numerous firefighters were visible at the scene, with helicopters hovering overhead. Police quickly cordoned off the area, which was near the scene of a terrorist attack at a Christmas market in 2016.
The square has since been reinforced to safeguard it and protect the large number of people who pass through it every day. A medevac helicopter was seen taking off from the area, normally a crowded square filled with shoppers.
John Barrowman, presenter and actor who appeared in the TV series ‘Doctor Who’, was on vacation in Berlin browsing a store near the scene of the incident.
In a series of social media updates from the scene, Mr Barrowman described seeing a body on the ground and limping injuries. Sirens could be heard blaring in the background as it showed emergency service vehicles parked on the street in one update and a helicopter in another.
“The police presence is incredible. They are clearing the area,” he said in one of the videos posted on Twitter. “I heard the bang and crash when we were in a store and then we walked out and just saw the carnage,” he said.
In the 2016 terrorist attack, 12 people were killed when an assailant stole a truck and threw it into a crowd of people. The attacker was killed later in a shootout with police in Italy.
In 2018, two people were killed after the driver of a small truck rammed into a group of people in the heart of the old town of Münster in western Germany. The driver committed suicide in the cab of the truck shortly after the accident.
Two years later, five people were killed after a drunken 51-year-old German zigzagged his SUV about half a mile through a busy pedestrianized shopping street lined with shops in the southwestern city of Trier. Authorities said the man did not appear to be politically or religiously motivated.
Anna Schaverien contributed reporting from London.
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