One dead and nine injured after car hits pedestrians in Berlin
Police are still trying to work out if was deliberate or accidental
Last updated 8th Jun 2022
At least one person was killed and nine others injured when a man drove a car into pedestrians in a popular Berlin shopping district, rescue services have said.
The man drove into people on a street corner at around 10.30am before getting the car back on the road and then crashing into a shop window a short distance away, police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.
Five people sustained life-threatening injuries and another three were seriously injured, fire service spokesman Adrian Wentzel told n-tv television. Police said more than a dozen people had been injured.
Police would not confirm German media reports that those killed and injured were part of a school group, but said they "appeared to belong together".
The driver was apparently detained by passers-by before being arrested by a police officer who was near the scene, Mr Cablitz said. He added that officers were trying to determine whether he had deliberately driven 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. They did not give further details.
Large numbers of rescue vehicles and first responders were at the scene.
Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey tweeted that she was "deeply shocked by this incident".
German interior ministry spokesman Maximilian Kall said it was "too soon" to say whether it was an accident or an intentional act.
Meanwhile, American-British actor John Barrowman, who was in a nearby shop with his partner at the time of the crash, described the scene as "carnage". Large numbers of police and first responders, including a helicopter, were at the scene, he said.
The incident happened at one end of the Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard and next to the Breitscheidplatz square, where an extremist carried out a vehicle attack on a Christmas market in 2016, resulting in 13 deaths.
In a 2019 incident in central Berlin, an SUV ploughed into a group of pedestrians in central Berlin, killing four people. The driver had suffered an epileptic seizure and veered onto the pavement.