Berlin car crash: Driving into pedestrians was ‘deliberate act of a psychologically ill man’, say police

Sister of driver says her brother has ‘serious problems’

The car smashed into a shop window after hitting people near Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany, on 8 June, 2022 (REUTERS)

The 29-year-old driver who killed a teacher and injured 14 students by ploughing into them in central Berlin on Wednesday morning may be mentally unwell, German officials have said.

After hitting pedestrians and then crashing into a shop near Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on the Breitscheidplatz, the German-Armenian man, who has been named by local media as Gor H, was stopped by bystanders and was later detained by police.

"The latest evidence suggests this is a case of a mentally ill person running amok," Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior affairs minister, said of the attack.

A statement from police said investigations pointed to the “deliberate act of a psychologically ill man”.

Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s mayor, said on Thursday that the attacker appeared to be suffering from mental illness.

The city’s mayor added that investigators were trying to learn more about a possible motive, saying they were attempting “to find out more from the partially confused statements he is making”.

Gor H’s sister, whose car was used in the rampage, told the German daily Bild that her brother “has serious problems”, while their neighbours described him as a “loving and nice person”.

The secondary school teacher who died in the incident was in the German capital on a school trip from the small town of Bad Arolsen in Hesse state. Another teacher is fighting for his life following the incident.

The fire service said on Wednesday that 12 people were injured and six were in a life-threatening condition. The police later said 14 students were among this group.

Speaking after the attack, a government spokesperson said: “The federal government has of course learned of this terrible incident in Berlin today and is very concerned and distressed about it.”

"Our thoughts, our sympathy are with the injured and their relatives,” they added.

A pupil of the Kaulbach secondary school places a sticker in front of the school in Bad Arolsen (REUTERS)

The Scottish-American actor John Barrowman was at the scene shortly after the incident. "I heard the bang and the crash when we were in a store, and then we came out and we just saw the carnage," he tweeted.

The attack occurred near the place where Anis Amri, a Tunisian man, killed 11 people and injured dozens of others when he drove a truck into a busy Christmas market on 19 December, 2016.

German investigators are trying to make sense of “confused” statements from a 29-year-old man who rammed his car into a group of schoolchildren and killed a teacher in Berlin, the city’s mayor, Franziska Giffey, said on Thursday.

The authorities have established that the German-Armenian man was severely mentally ill but had yet to understand any motive for Wednesday’s incident, or any possible connection to posters about Turkey found in the back of his car, she said.

Families were in mourning for the teacher who was killed while taking schoolchildren on a trip to the German capital from the small town of Bad Arolsen, in the state of Hesse.

The crash injured around 30 people, including 14 students, seven of whom were severely hurt and taken to hospital, police said. Another male teacher was also severely injured, and 17 passers-by sustained varying degrees of injuries.

A statement from police said investigations pointed to the “deliberate act of a psychologically ill man”.

The incident took place in a busy shopping district near the site of a fatal attack in 2016, when a truck ram