At Least Two Killed After Car Rams Crowd in Mannheim, Germany

The police in Mannheim, in the country’s southwest, said that the driver, a 40-year-old German citizen, had been arrested and that they did not believe he had a political motive.

An 83-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man were killed and 11 others were injured — five severely — when a man drove a car into a lunch-hour crowd in the southwestern German city of Mannheim on Monday, the authorities said.

The driver is a 40-year-old German citizen who lived in neighboring Ludwigshafen, the police and the public attorney said on Monday evening, adding that they did not think the man had a political motive.

The police arrested the man, who was not named publicly, soon after the event and said they thought he was the only person involved. They said they believed the act was deliberate and on Monday night were searching the man’s home as well as his internet history to help understand his motive.

The police said the driver had a criminal record that included assault, a drunk-driving charge and a conviction for hate speech, for a right-wing comment he made on Facebook in 2018. The man, who had worked as a landscaper, had a history of mental illness, the authorities said, and he had a weapon that fired blanks on him during the attack.

There were more than 300 police officers on the scene immediately after the attack.

Several recent ramming attacks had put Germans on edge ahead of national elections last month.

“Once again, we mourn with Mannheim. Once again, we mourn with the families of the victims of a senseless act of violence and fear for the injured,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a statement.

Two weeks ago, a 24-year-old Afghan man who was seeking asylum intentionally drove into a union demonstration in Munich, killing a 2-year-old and her mother and wounding several dozen others.

And in December, a Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for more than a decade was accused of driving his car into a Christmas market in the central city of Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring hundreds of others.

Those attacks, by immigrants or foreign-born residents, raised questions about domestic security and immigration policy ahead of the elections, in which the hard-right Alternative for Germany party had its best showing ever.

Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be Germany’s next chancellor after his party won the most votes in last month’s election, also expressed his sympathies. “This incident — like the terrible acts of the past few months — is an urgent reminder that we must do everything we can to prevent such acts,” he said in a statement posted to X.

There have also been a number of vehicle attacks in the past years by German-born perpetrators. Five years ago, a man who had been living in his car drove into a crowd in Trier, killing four. In 2018, a man with a history of psychological problems plowed his van into a crowd in Münster, in the country’s west, killing two.

In Mannheim, the driver reportedly entered a pedestrian-only stretch of the city center from its landmark water tower and drove roughly 700 yards toward the square known as Paradeplatz. The incident occurred at about 12:15 p.m., according to the police, when lunchtime crowds were enjoying unseasonably warm weather.

Driving a small black Ford, the man sped through the pedestrian zone, hitting people along the way, the police said. The driver then fled the area in his heavily damaged car before abandoning it. The police found the empty car just minutes after the attack and were later able to arrest the man as he was trying to flee on foot.

Detached pieces of the car could be seen along the vehicle’s path, video images showed.

A day earlier, a parade with 70 floats and 2,500 participants passed through the same zone in an annual carnival celebration. The police said about 250,000 people had attended.

Mannheim, which has a population of about 320,000, was in the headlines last year when an Afghan citizen living in Germany stabbed people at a far-right demonstration, killing a police officer who had rushed in to stop the attack.

After the events on Monday, the nearby city of Heidelberg canceled carnival celebrations scheduled for Tuesday.

“This is the second time within a year that our neighboring city has suffered such a terrible act of violence — in a situation like this, it was inconceivable for us to celebrate a happy carnival parade here in Heidelberg,” Mayor Eckart Würzner said.

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