Munich knife attack: Suspect sent to psychiatric hospital
October 21, 2017
On Sunday, Munich authorities announced that the suspect in a knife attack that wounded eight people in the Bavarian capital had been placed in psychiatric care following a court order. According to police, the man has a prior criminal record for grievous bodily harm, robbery and drug-related crimes.
Eight people were wounded in the string of knife attacks on Saturday morning, but none of them sustained life-threatening injuries, police said.
A SWAT team arrested the suspect after a three-hour manhunt.
Police chief Hubertus Andrae said that investigators had ruled out terrorism or religion as a motive for the attack.
Read more: Four hospitalized after stabbing in Frankfurt train station
The suspect is believed to suffer from mental health problems and was already well-known to the authorities for his previous offenses, police announced following his capture.
The eight wounded were aged between 12 and 77 years old. It is believed that the suspect chose his victims at random in several locations around the city before he escaped by bicycle. During questioning, he told the interrogating officers that the sound of the police helicopters stopped him from harming more people.
Immediately following the attack, the authorities announced that they had deployed "all available police forces" to search for the attacker. The police called on people living in the Rosenheimer Platz area to remain indoors and avoid the area, as well as the areas near the Ostbahnhof railway station and Ostpark.
Saturday's attack triggered memories of the 2016 killing spree committed by a teenager in Munich. The shooter identified himself as a German and an Aryan and apparently wanted to target youths with Turkish and Albanian backgrounds.
cw,dj,es/aw (dpa, AFP, AP)