Two dead and 10 injured in Mannheim after Alexander S. – reportedly a 40 year-old native German with no migrant background – drives his Ford Fiesta into Carneval crowds
Today at 12:15pm, in Mannheim, a 40 year-old German man named Alexander S. drove his black Ford Fiesta through a crowd gathered on the Planken, a pedestrian boulevard. His target was apparently the annual Fasnachtsmarkt, a Carnival market with food carts and rides for children. He killed two people, one of them a woman and another a fifty year-old man. Among the five seriously injured are several children, two of whom witnesses say lost their legs.
Alexander S. fled the scene in his Fiesta, and a taxi driver (Afzal M.) pursued him to the Spatzenbrücke, which leads across a Neckar canal. There Alexander S. disembarked from his badly damaged car and fired a gas pistol at his pursuer before fleeing on foot. Police arrested Alexander S. near the Mannheim harbour half an hour later. Before they could take him into custody, he shot himself in the mouth with a blank round. He is presently in hospital in critical condition. Police sources report to media that he is understood to suffer from psychological problems.
The owner of the Ford Fiesta used in the attack – very likely but not certainly Alexander S. himself – previously came to the notice of police “for displaying images of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations,” at least one of them associated with “right-wing extremism.” He also had himself admitted to hospital after expressing a desire to douse himself with petrol and set himself alight. Police do not suspect that Alexander S. had any political motivations for today’s attack.
I followed this story all day, and I regret that I have no additional information to offer. Authorities have released almost no details, and most of what I provide here is based on anonymous leaks from police sources; some of it may be unreliable. I at least wanted to confirm that, contrary to many social media rumours and the all-too-familiar nature of today’s events, what happened in Mannheim was neither an act of Islamist terrorism nor another instance of migrant violence.
And it seems that a taxi driver of migrant origin was the good guy here.
There's a basic truth in life. Good people are good; bad people are bad; weak people can be led in any direction. Good people who are adherents of any cult will interpret its tenets according to their own nature; bad people, likewise. And weak people can be made to believe any idiocy in their hunger to belong and be valued.
And it's really bad for anyone to be crazy, and many people suffer from forms of mental illness that are either not treatable, or must be treated under rigorous controls because a basic fact about crazy people is they do not recognize their crazy.
I am so sorry to see the anguish caused today. It will undoubtedly come out that Alexander S. was unsafe at any speed, and though hurling insults at politicians is grounds for removal, at least temporarily, from society, being a walking timebomb is something bureaucrats hardly even wring their hands over.
The terrorist stabbing in Haifa, Israel today was a Druze born in Germany. The Druze community in Israel has disavowed any connection to him and won’t let him be given a Druze burial.