‘RANDOM’ HANDLES JERRY AT GERMAN FESTIVAL LEAVES DEAD, OTHERS INJURED: REPORT
The attack occurred just before noon in a park in Aschaffenburg, a city of about 72,000 people. Bavaria’s top security official, Joachim Herrmann, said the assailant attacked the boy, who was part of a group of kindergarten children, with a kitchen knife.
He said the 2-year-old of Moroccan origin was killed, along with a 41-year-old German man who was passing by and appeared to have intervened to protect the other children. Bavarian officials said two adults and a 2-year-old Syrian girl were injured and taken to a hospital for treatment, and none of their lives were in danger.
Other bystanders chased the suspect and arrested him 12 minutes after the attack, Herrmann said.
Rescue vehicles are seen near the crime scene in Aschaffenburg, Germany, Wednesday, January 22, 2025, where two other people were killed in a knife attack. (Ralf Hettler/dpa AP)
He said the suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national, had come to the government’s attention at least three times due to acts of violence. Each time, he was sent to psychiatric treatment and later released.
The suspect is believed to have arrived in Germany in November 2022 and requested asylum in early 2023, Herrmann said. On December 4, he told the government that he would leave the country voluntarily and request documents from the Afghan consulate. A week later, the German government officially closed the asylum and asked him to leave.
Police will work in the coming days to identify his motive, Herrmann said, adding that suspicions point to his psychiatric illness. An initial search of his room in a refugee home revealed no evidence of his radical Islamic views and only revealed medications tailored to his psychiatric treatment, he said.
The attack comes politically a month before the German national elections.
Scholz issued a strong message condemning what he called “an incomprehensible act of terror. “
“I’m tired of seeing these types of violence happening here every few weeks, from perpetrators coming to us to find cover here,” he said. “Misguided tolerance is beside the point here. The government will have to explain, under wonderful pressure, why the attacker was still in Germany. “
That must lead to “immediate consequences — it is not enough to talk,” Scholz added. He didn’t elaborate.
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Following a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant in Mannheim in May that left a police officer dead and four more people injured, Scholz vowed that Germany would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again. He vowed to step up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers following a knife attack in Solingen in August in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria is accused of killing three people.
At the end of August, Germany expelled Afghan citizens to their country for the first time since the Taliban regained strength in 2021.
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