A 29-year-old driver intentionally smashed his car into a crowd of Carnival celebrants in Germany on Monday, causing 35 people—among them 18 children— to be hospitalized.
The incident took place near a local supermarket after 2:30 p.m. local time on “Rosen-Montag” (Rose-Monday), one of the highlights in the multi-day Carnival festivities in the village of Volkmarsen in the state of Hesse in central Germany.
According to reports, a silver Mercedes Benz station wagon broke through some plastic barriers and plunged at full throttle into a pageant of mostly children, injuring several dozen partygoers, some of them seriously or even life-threateningly.
“There were several dozen injured, among them some seriously and sadly also children,” police spokesperson Henning Hinn said, confirming that the deed was intentional, AP reported.
Another 17 people were treated for their injuries but were allowed to return home, according to the Associated Press.
“We can’t say anything about his precise motives,” Hinn told reporters, AP reported. Hinn added that the driver himself, a 29-year-old from the area, had sustained serious head injuries and could not have been interviewed yet. The driver is being held on suspicion of attempted homicide.
“We are on the ground with a big deployment. An investigation is underway,” north Hesse police said on Twitter, according to Reuters.
Police urged witnesses not to upload video footage of the incident but to use an officially installed police portal instead.
Police canceled all Carnival parades on Monday in Hesse state as a precaution. The Tuesday festivities would continue as scheduled, however, with a heightened acuity level, although no further threat was expected to occur, as it seemed to be an isolated incident.
Shooting in Hessen
The assault came just days after another one in Hanau, also in the state of Hesse. German officials believe that the gunman who committed two shootings on Wednesday, Feb. 19, acted out of racism, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Officials gathering information and evidence said that the suspect, identified as Tobias Rathjen, a 43-year-old German citizen, had allegedly posted a video before the murders.
In an earlier report, the shooting on Feb. 19 resulted in the death of nine individuals and five injured in Hanau city, located just 15 miles away from Frankfurt. The suspect entered a shisha bar and opened fire. Witnesses recalled hearing around eight to nine shots fired.
Following that initial attack, the suspect drove to another location—the city’s Kessselstadt neighborhood and opened fire in another shisha bar. He escaped again after the second shooting.
Fox News reported that all of the victims of the Wednesday shooting were of Kurdish descent.
Police quickly responded to both scenes, giving medical attention to the injured and assessing the situation. Authorities also sealed off the areas where the crime occurred,
Not far from the scene of the second shooting, officers found the bodies of the Tobias Rathjen, the individual who authorities believed to be the suspect, along with his mother. The Washington Post also reported that Rathjen’s father was found outside his home, unharmed.
NTD reporter Paula Liu contributed to this report.
