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“There are several dead and several people seriously injured,” Trier Presidium spokesman Karl-Peter Jochem said Tuesday. The driver, a 51-year-old German from the Trier-Saarburg district, was arrested and the vehicle was impounded. According to the police, he apparently hit people “indiscriminately” with a pickup truck in the pedestrian zone.
“What happened in Trier is shocking,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Twitter on Tuesday. “The thought is with the families of the victims, with the many injured and with all those who are currently on duty to care for those affected.”
The reasons the driver entered the pedestrian zone initially were unclear. Trier Mayor Wolfram Leibe (SPD) spoke in an interview with the SWR of a “gunman in the city center.” Eyewitnesses reported that people were thrown into the air.
A large number of police and rescuers were in action. The ADAC sent rescue helicopters. Large parts of the city center were cordoned off. After the arrest there is no longer any danger to the population, police said. Previously, the population had been asked to avoid the city center.
The driver was very drunk
The man who is said to have bumped into numerous people in Trier was actually drunk. He had previously “consumed non-negligible amounts of alcohol,” Chief Prosecutor Peter Fritzen told a news conference in Trier on Tuesday. The 51-year-old man had a breath alcohol level of 1.4 per thousand. He is being investigated in four cases on urgent suspicion of murder.
Additionally, he was charged with dangerous bodily harm in many other cases, Fritzen said. The 51-year-old could have a mental illness. There are indications of a psychiatric illness, said the superior prosecutor. A doctor had examined the man and a psychiatric report would probably be commissioned. There is no indication of a “somewhat terrorist” political or religious motive.
The driver has spent the last few days in a car, according to police. He did not spend time in an apartment, Franz-Dieter Ankner, vice chairman of the Trier Police Department, said Tuesday. The suspect is a German citizen born in Trier in 1969. Rescue forces overpowered him and arrested him.
Four people died and 15 people were injured in the fatal incident. Four people were seriously injured, five seriously injured and six people were slightly injured, Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) said in Trier on Tuesday. Numerous people in the city center were also traumatized.
Police asked residents to avoid the area. It also asked that photos and videos not be shared on social networks and announced a upload platform.
