From BZ editors
It looks as if children tried to draw soap bubbles on the pavement. Those yellow circles are what’s left of the gray. In this place a teacher died (51), so many of her students were injured. Six are still fighting for their lives.
Police officers marked with the circles where the victims of the amok driver lay. Silent testimony to the insanity on Wednesday when Gor H. (29) crashed his sister’s silver Renault Clio onto the sidewalk on the corner of Rankestraße and Tauentzien. At 10:26 a.m., right in the middle of the 10th class from Bad Arolsen, who were making their final trip to Berlin.
16-year-old girls and boys, for whom the happy times turned into endless days of tears. Young people before the start of a new phase of life, who had to watch their teacher die, their teacher was seriously injured, their friends lying bleeding on the sidewalk. Images they will never forget, injuries that will never heal.
Shortly after the fact. Firefighters deal with the witnesses who witnessed the killing spree. They were also cared for by pastors Photo: Spreepicture
The Catholic Archbishop Heiner Koch (67) called on all Berlin schools to observe a minute’s silence at 10:30 a.m. on Friday. An act of compassion and humanity. “I was particularly shocked and shocked,” says Koch, “that a school class was the victim of the rampage.”
At the place of mourning, directly opposite the Memorial Church, passers-by placed flowers and candles at two pedestrian traffic lights. The cars are driving again, Berliners and tourists are walking along the Kudamm. Also about the yellow circles. Those who know what happened here, stand still for a moment.
Mourning the day after the killing spree: passers-by put flowers on a traffic light pole Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP
“When I opened my shop, everything was just over,” says Yunus Emre Baris (24), a seller in the kebab shop on Tauentzien, “the depressing feeling of having been so close to death changed me. I am deeply grateful that I am still alive.”
Witness: “There was no life left in her”
Sadik R. (47), truck driver from Spandau, returned to the scene of the crime with his cousin the day after. They talk. About the horrific images, the fear of death, the screams. He was a witness. “I saw the man run over the woman,” he says, “she threw himself across the street and he ran over her again. There was no life left in her.”
Gor H. (29) raced over Kudamm and Tauentzien on Wednesday, leaving behind numerous victims and a field of debris Photo: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PR
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (51, SPD) also came. She knelt in front of a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses there on Thursday; still, moved, mourning.
For her more than the “heartfelt sympathy of the federal government”. Faeser comes from Hesse. Like the dead teacher Tanja H. Like many of the 32 injured.
Nancy Faeser (SPD, center), Federal Minister of the Interior and Homeland, visited the crime scene near the Berlin Memorial Church on Thursday together with Barbara Slowik (2nd from left), Chief of Police in Berlin Photo: picture alliance/dpa
It’s so fast. In seconds a world collapses. Again at Breitscheidplatz. Again in the heart of Berlin. Another wound.
