Teacher killed, 9 other people seriously injured as vehicle drives into pedestrians in Berlin
Berlin — A man drove a car into a German school group standing in a popular Berlin shopping district Wednesday, killing a teacher and seriously injuring nine people, authorities said. The man drove into people on a street corner at around 10:30 a.m. before getting the car back on the road and then crashing into a shop window around a block further on, police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.
Berlin's top security official, Iris Spranger, said the woman killed was a teacher on a trip to the German capital with students from a secondary school in the central German state of Hesse.
Six people suffered life-threatening injuries and another three were seriously injured, said fire service spokesman Adrian Wentzel. Police said 14 students from Hesse were among those who suffered injuries of varying severity, but didn't give a total tally.
The driver was apparently detained by passers-by and then arrested swiftly by a police officer who was near the scene, Cablitz said. He said police were trying to determine whether the man deliberately drove into pedestrians or whether it was an accident, possibly caused by a medical emergency.
Police later tweeted that the driver was a 29-year-old German-Armenian who lived in Berlin.
Spranger said posters were found in the man's car "in which he expressed views about Turkey."
In a later interview with regional public broadcaster RBB, Spranger said Germany's domestic intelligence agency had no immediate information on the man and authorities were still checking whether he was previously known to police. She said the driver was in a hospital, "because we must of course immediately clarify whether he is ill, whether he took drugs and so on."
"We can't rule anything out at the moment ... but there is no claim of responsibility," Spranger said.
American-British actor John Barrowman, who was in a nearby store with his partner at the time of the crash, described the scene as "carnage." Large numbers of police and first responders were at the scene, he said.
Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey said she was "deeply shocked" by the incident and that authorities were keeping an open mind about possible motives.
"Before speculating, I think it's important at this stage to really let the police and fire service conduct their investigation," the mayor said. "We want the greatest possible transparency, but we also want reliable information."
A source in Berlin's fire department told CBS News' Anna Noryskiewicz that it appeared likely the Wednesday crash was accidental, but police officials later told her that it may have been a deliberate act. They did not see initial indications of a political or terror motive, however.
Giffey said the crash brought "terrible memories" of a truck attack more than five years at the nearby Breitscheidplatz square. An Islamic extremist drove into a Christmas market in 2016, resulting in 13 deaths.
In a 2019 incident in central Berlin, an SUV plowed into a group of pedestrians, killing four people. The driver had suffered an epileptic seizure and veered onto the sidewalk.
A memorial service for the people killed or hurt in Wednesday's crash was held in the evening at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on the Breitscheidplatz, next to the scene of the crash.
