Car ramming suspect in Germany’s Mannheim attack has ‘indications of mental illness’

Politicians and police treated the noon-time vehicle rampage on Paradeplatz, a pedestrianised street in downtown Mannheim, as a deliberate act.

“This act is one of several crimes in the recent past in which a car was misused as a weapon,” said the Baden-Wuerttemberg state interior minister Thomas Strobl.

He said the sole suspect in the case, a 40-year-old German, lived in the city of Ludwigshafen, which lies directly across the river Rhine from Mannheim but is in the neighbouring state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Strobl added that investigators saw “no indication of an extremist or religious background” and that “the motivation could be rooted in the person of the perpetrator himself,” suggesting psychological troubles.

German Prosecutor Romeo Schuessler later confirmed that suspicion.

“We have concrete indications that the perpetrator had a mental illness,” he told a press conference, ruling out a “politically motivated act”.

The suspect has been arrested and is currently being treated in hospital.

'People were shouting for help'

Enes Yildiz, 24, who works in tax consulting in a nearby office, said: “I just heard a very, very loud noise. It was rather extraordinary, not a noise that you hear every day.”

He went down to the street and saw a dead body lying on the ground and pools of blood, he said. The motionless victim appeared to have been thrown through the air by the impact.

“There were a lot of people crying, people shouting for help, people calling the police.”

He walked further down the street to witness the carnage at the city’s central Paradeplatz: “It was a mess, as if it had been hit by a bomb. The whole place was in disarray.”

Yildiz saw more victims lying in the street, he recounted. “I was shocked. I grew up here, I work here every day. I walk along the route where it happened every day.”

The intensive care unit of Mannheim’s university hospital quickly issued a disaster alert, readying for a wave of casualties needing emergency treatment.

Third car-ramming attack in as many months

German cities have seen several violent attacks in recent months, including stabbing sprees and car ramming attacks.

“Once again we mourn with the relatives of the victims of a senseless act of violence and fear for the injured,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X, adding: “We cannot accept this.”

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Last month a man drove a car into a trade union rally in the southern city of Munich, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother. Police arrested a 24-year-old Afghan suspect.

In December a car-ramming attack targeted a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six people and wounding hundreds. Police arrested a Saudi man at the scene.

Mannheim itself was the scene of a stabbing attack at an anti-Islam rally in May in which a policeman was killed and five others wounded.

A Syrian man is now on trial over that attack, which happened some 300 metres from Monday’s car-ramming.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)