‘People Were Thrown Through the Air’: Several Dead After Car Crashes Through German Pedestrian Street

Police are investigating after a car sped through a pedestrianised street in the German city of Trier on Tuesday afternoon, a ‘rampage’ that left at least two dead.

Update Wednesday

The death toll rose to five overnight, individuals including a nine-week-old-baby killed after a 51-year-old man — still unnamed and with no potential motivation suggested by authorities — through a shopping street on Tuesday.

To read the latest, click here. 

Update 1900 GMT

Trier police have now confirmed that four people were killed after a car was driven into pedestrians on a shopping street in the centre of the city. A statement from the force said that the suspect was not previously known to the government for extremism and they did not suspect a politically motivated attack. The suspect put up “considerable resistance” to arrest.

Volksfreund, a local news source, reports the dead are all locals: a 73-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man, 25-year-old woman, and a nine-month-old girl. The mother of the child is in hospital.

A church service is taking place Tuesday night in memory of the dead.

Read the original story below: 

Trier police confirmed that two people had died on Tuesday, with reports suggesting 10 others injured, including a child. Local news reported that the number of dead was actually four, and that the child mentioned in other reports was among the dead, and named the number of injured at 30.

German source Die Welt reports eyewitnesses who said “that people were thrown through the air” as a car drove into a pedestrianised shopping area at speed.

Police subsequently arrested a 51-year-old German citizen and are investigating the circumstances around the incident, and whether there was any motive. The emergency service response to the deaths is so large, ambulances have come from over the nearby Luxembourgian border to assist.

Die Welt cited the remarks of Trier’s mayor who said Tuesday’s deaths were due to a “rampage”, and what had been left behind by the SUV-type car driving through the pedestrian area was a “picture of horror”.

As is now customary in the aftermath of incidents that share similarities with previous terror attacks, German citizens have been asked by the government to not share speculation and rumours on the internet, Deutsche Welle reports. Indeed, the fact that two were killed in Trier today, the first day of December, near the city market, and surrounded by Christmas lights, will inevitably draw a comparison to the Berlin Christmas Market Attack, although police have indicated no extremist link today.