A driver steering a car struck pedestrians on a busy shopping street in central Leipzig shortly before 5 p.m. Monday, killing two people and leaving at least three others with serious injuries, city and police authorities said. Several additional people sustained less severe injuries, officials added, in what Mayor Burkhard Jung said authorities believe was a deliberate rampage.
The suspect, a 33-year-old German citizen from the Leipzig area, was detained in the vehicle and did not resist arrest, Police Chief René Demmler told reporters. Prosecutors said he is under investigation on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. No immediate motive was given.
Police said the man drove from Augustusplatz, a major square, along Grimmaische Strasse into the city’s central pedestrian zone. Demmler stressed that there was no longer any danger to the public.
Saxony’s interior minister, Armin Schuster, said investigators believe the man acted alone. He noted that rage and “psychological instability” are often factors in such cases but added that he would not speculate on whether that applied here.
“An act like this leaves us speechless — and it makes us determined,” Saxony state governor Michael Kretschmer said in a statement issued through the German news agency dpa. “We will do everything in our power to solve this case quickly and completely.”
Leipzig, a city of more than 630,000 residents in eastern Germany southwest of Berlin, is one of the country’s largest urban centers. Photographs from the scene showed a car with a battered front end and shattered windshield. The investigation is ongoing.