A car rammed into passers-by on Wednesday morning in a Berlin shopping thoroughfare, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others before its driver, whose motives are unknown, was arrested, police said.
The vehicle, a metallic gray Renault Clio, came to fit around 10:30 a.m. (08:30 GMT) in the window of a large perfumery chain in this very busy district located near Zoo station.
The Berlin police said they do not know at this stage whether it is an intentional act or a loss of control of the vehicle.
Its author tried to flee before being overpowered by passers-by and then arrested by police, said on the spot a police official, Thilo Cablitz.
“There are several injured, some seriously, as well as in the current state one dead person,” tweeted the Berlin police, adding that they had deployed 130 police officers to the scene.
The man driving the car first crashed into passers-by “before continuing his race” for about 150 to 200 m and then finishing it “in a shop window”, Mr. Cablitz told the news channel in continuous n-tv.
According to the daily Bild, the deceased victim is a man.
Fly in the air
“I was sitting near the fountain and I heard a loud noise, then I saw a person flying through the air (crushed by the car),” a witness, Frank Vittchen, told AFP on the spot. .
“He went at high speed on the sidewalk but he did not brake. Then he got back on the road and fled,” he added.
The Renault Clio was still visible after the fact, embedded in the store window, passenger door open, AFP journalists found.
The facts took place near the Memorial Church, a landmark monument in the western part of the German capital, located on one of Berlin’s busiest commercial arteries, the Kurfürstendamm.
Numerous police and firefighters were deployed to the scene, also located just off the square where, on December 19, 2016, an Islamist ram truck attack on a Christmas market killed 12 people.
Several car-ramming attacks have been carried out in Germany in recent years by drivers suffering from psychological disorders.
One of the most serious was perpetrated in April 2018 in Münster. A man drove a mini-van into a group of people gathered in front of a restaurant, killing five of them, before shooting himself dead.
In December 2020, a 51-year-old drunk and psychotic driver killed five people, including a baby, and seriously injured 14 others when he drove into a pedestrian area in Trier just before Christmas.
In Volksmarsen, a municipality in the Hesse region (west), also in 2020, a 30-year-old German injured around 100 people by ramming into the crowd during a carnival parade.