Car in crowd in Germany: five people died – VG

A 51-year-old German has been arrested and interrogated.

Trier police say they received the first report of an SUV driving in the downtown pedestrian zone at 1:47 p.m.

At 7 p.m., they confirm that four people have died, before another death was confirmed later Tuesday.

Children among the dead

Mayor Wolfram Leibe describes horrible scenes.

– It was horrible. I saw a children’s shoe thrown on the street. The girl who owns it is dead, he tells SWR with tears in his eyes.

Police have confirmed that at least one child is among the dead. Secretary of State Malu Dreyer said in a statement at 5.25 pm that a baby is among the victims.

Arrested man

The driver of the car has been arrested and the police are in control of the vehicle. They ask people to stay away from the city center, but say the situation has cleared up and the danger has passed.

The man arrested is a 51-year-old German from the Trier-Saarburg region, police confirm. The newspaper Focus and Der Spiegel identifies him as “Bernd W.”

Police spokesman Jochem tells SWR that the man has not yet been questioned and that they cannot say anything about what the motivation for driving wild was.

Must have driven for about a kilometer

The car is said to have driven about a kilometer on the pedestrian street before it was stopped, police said at a news conference they held Tuesday afternoon.

A witness told the local Volksfreund newspaper that a gray Range Rover was speeding down Brotstraße street and there were injuries.

– People were flying through the air, says the witness.

A video circulating on social media shows police detaining a man right next to a large gray car with a dented hood.

Trier police spokesman Uwe Konz told the German newspaper Bild that ambulance personnel are working at the scene and that the police are still unable to say anything about the background to the incident, or whether it is terror or not.

Photos and videos from the city show a massive emergency response and a large number of ambulances at the scene.

– What happened in Trier is terrible, writes Steffen Seibert, spokesman for the German government, on Twitter.

– The thoughts are with the injured, the families and all those who now work to care for those affected.

Trier is a city of 110,636 inhabitants, located in western Germany near the border with Luxembourg. A memorial service for the victims outside the historic “Porta Nigra” in the city center is scheduled for ten o’clock on Wednesday.

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