Police seek motive after car-ramming incident in Germany

VOLKMARSEN (Germany) • The German authorities scrambled yesterday to determine the motives of a man who ploughed his car into a carnival procession, injuring over 50 people and further unsettling a country rocked by a fatal mass shooting last week.

Investigators said the 29-year-old driver was not drunk at the time of the incident on Monday, but could not rule out that he was under the influence of drugs, national news agency DPA said.

The incident, which injured 52 including 18 children, came just days after a gunman with suspected racist motives killed nine people with migrant backgrounds in Hanau, also in western Hesse state.

Fearing a repeat attack, officials cancelled all carnival parades on Monday, while a children's procession was called off yesterday in state capital Wiesbaden.

But the authorities have stopped short of calling the latest incident an attack, saying the driver was himself injured and could not be questioned immediately after he drove into the crowd.

"I saw him drive off, he looked as if he was on drugs and he said, 'soon I'll be in the papers'," a neighbour of the suspect told German broadcaster RTL.

Prosecutors in Frankfurt have opened an investigation into the German national on suspicion of attempted homicide.

They have also arrested a second person who filmed the car-ramming incident, citing a privacy law against gawkers.

Eyewitnesses described how the man ploughed the Mercedes at high speed through a barrier and into crowds at the "Rose Monday" parade in Volkmarsen.

"There were 15 people lying on the ground when I arrived, including many small children," journalist Elmar Schulten told mass-market daily Bild. "Everyone looked as if they'd been crying, including grown men, fathers who had seen their children lying on the ground."

Yesterday, carnival floats and balloons were still in place in Volkmarsen and emergency vehicles remained at the scene as the perpetrator's car was hauled away.

Hessian police said that among the injured, 35 people remained in hospital while the other 17 had returned home.

The sight of a car ploughing through crowds recalled Germany's deadliest terror attack in recent history, when a militant drove his truck into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people in 2016. The failed Tunisian asylum seeker had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

AGENCE FRANCE -PRESSE