Police in Berlin on Friday said a 30-year-old male tourist from Spain had been seriously injured in a stabbing at the site of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.
Authorities later said one male suspect had been taken into custody near the scene of the crime. They added that he was arrested “due to recognizable bloodstains.”
Police said emergency workers were at the scene “to care for several people who had to witness the events.”
How was the suspect arrested?
Initially after the attack, police said the suspect was at large. A manhunt was launched.
Then, some three hours later, a man approached a group of police personnel at the scene of the incident, French AFP news agency journalists said. Officers wrestled him to the ground, taking him to custody.
“We have the suspect,” one officer reportedly shouted. The man was laying face-down on the ground as he was being handcuffed.
Police spokesman Florian Nath then confirmed the arrest of the male suspect.
“It’s probably the suspect that attacked the 30-year-old Spanish citizen at 6:00 pm here at the memorial,” Nath said, adding that the man had been seen to have “blood on his hands.”
Police stressed they still had no knowledge of the potential motive or the suspect’s identity.
What else do we know about the attack?
The Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that police had sealed off the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the city center.
Police told the newspaper the man had been injured with a sharp object and was taken by the fire brigade to hospital.
Police later said the victim sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries.
The attack was said to have taken place on the northern side of the sprawling Holocaust memorial, near the US Embassy. Police said there was no initial indication regarding a potential motive for the crime.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by the architects Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold.
It is a 1.9-hectare (4.7-acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae,” arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.
Edited by Sean M. Sinico
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