The man who drove a car into a school class in Berlin on Wednesday morning has “serious psychological problems”. Mayor of Berlin Franziska Giffey said this to radio station Inforadio-RBB on Thursday German media† One woman was killed and 14 others, most of them children, were injured in the incident.
According to Giffey, an ongoing police investigation shows that the man has “severe mental problems”. With the help of an interpreter, the police would try to understand the perpetrator’s “sometimes confusing statements.” Police are also investigating what the posters and documents found in the car have to do with the man’s motive. The German newspaper picture reported on Wednesday that it was a confession letter, but the Berlin SPD director Iris Spranger subsequently denied this.
The 29-year-old German-Armenian man, who was taken to hospital after his arrest, drove a passenger car into the school class at the Gedächtniskirche, on the well-known shopping boulevard Kurfürstendamm, on Wednesday. The class visited Berlin from a small town in the state of Hesse. Mayor Giffey spoke of “a dark day in the history of Berlin” on Wednesday. Before that, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already tweeted that the “cruel frenzy” has “touched him deeply.”