BERLIN (AP) Developments on a knife attack at a German train station on Tuesday, May 10 (all times Central European Time).
- 3:45 p.m.
German investigators said the suspect in the station stabbing told them he had taken drugs, though they’ve found no record of any previous narcotics case against him.
Senior police official Lothar Koehler said that the man said in questioning that he had taken his shoes off because “he felt bugs on his feet that had caused blisters and were generating intense heat.”
He said there are indications that the man may have taken drugs two days ago in the Giessen area, where he lives, and that may have contributed to the suspect’s confused state.
- 3:25 p.m.
German authorities said they were doubtful as to whether the suspect in the stabbing at a station near Munich can be held criminally responsible.
This suggests that the man may not be mentally fit to stand trial.
Prosecutor Ken Heidenreich said that the man’s statements don’t fit together. Officials said there appears to have been no particular reason for the man to choose the Grafing Bahnhof station as the location for his attack. They said he caught a train there from Munich in the early hours of the morning.
- 3:20 p.m.
Police said there’s no evidence that a man suspected of stabbing four people at a station outside Munich had any accomplices or was part of an Islamic extremist network.
Senior police official Guenther Gietl said a woman reported hearing the words “infidel, you must die” at the time of the stabbing.
However, police said there was no sign that he had any contact with Islamic extremist groups or any evidence of radicalization. And another senior police official, Lothar Koehler, said the suspect made a “rather confused impression” during questioning.
- 12:40 p.m.
Bavaria’s top security official said the German suspect apparently had psychological problems and drug issues.
State Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said after a Cabinet meeting in Munich that the 27-year-old confessed to carrying out the attack, news agency dpa reported.
- 12:20 p.m.
German police investigating an early-morning attack in Bavaria said the man who died of injuries was on board the commuter train when he was assaulted.
Police spokesman Irwin Heumann said the 56-year-old victim, whose age was initially given by authorities as 50, was wounded by the attacker on the train Tuesday morning and died later in the hospital.
He said it was not yet clear where the three other victims wounded in the attack were assaulted.
The attacker has been identified as a 27-year-old German man, who Heumann said was from the state of Hesse.
He had no further details but police and prosecutors plan a press conference in the afternoon.
- 11:35 a.m.
Prosecutors investigating the stabbing at a Munich train station said the assailant made “politically motivated comments” as he attacked, and that they’re investigating witness reports he yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is great.”
Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the Munich prosecutor’s office in charge of the case, told The Associated Press it was too early to confirm for sure that’s what he said, but: “It’s going in that direction.”
Heidenreich said the suspect is a 27-year-old German citizen, with a traditional German-sounding name.
“We have no information that he is a recent immigrant here or of that background, but we don’t know for sure at the moment,” he said, adding that the man was not a Bavarian resident.
- 11 a.m.
The mayor of the small Bavarian town where four people were stabbed said local people were deeply shaken by the crime.
One person died of wounds he sustained in the early-morning stabbing at the Grafing Bahnhof station, east of Munich.
“Something like this is absolutely new and shakes people deeply — otherwise, they only know this kind of thing from television.” Grafing Mayor Angelika Obermayr said. “That it could happen here is absolutely stupefying.” she added.
She described Grafing as “an absolutely peaceful little Bavarian town.”
- 10:40 a.m.
“We can say very little at the moment about the background” to the attack, said Karl-Heinz Segerer, a spokesman for Bavaria’s state criminal police office.
Segerer told n-tv television that “witness questioning shows that there were politically motivated comments on the perpetrator’s part” during the attack. He didn’t give details and said witnesses and the suspect will be pressed on what exactly he said and to whom.
- 9:30 a.m.
German police said several people were stabbed at a train station near Munich. Four or five people were wounded, one of them fatally.
The incident happened at the Grafing Bahnhof station, some 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) east of Munich and near the end of one of the city’s commuter railway lines, shortly before 5 a.m. (0300 GMT). Police spokeswoman Michaela Grob said a man was arrested and authorities are working to identify him.
At least one platform at the station was expected to remain closed through midday, and there were some delays, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said.
