A German man was arrested after several people were stabbed at a train station near Munich early Tuesday, authorities said. One victim died in a hospital and three other people were wounded.
The assailant made “politically motivated comments” as he attacked, Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the Munich prosecutor’s office in charge of the case, told The Associated Press. He said his office was investigating witness reports that he yelled “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”
“It’s going in that direction,” Heidenreich said of his office’s initial information following the stabbing at the Grafing Bahnhof station, some 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) east of Munich.
Officials also raised the possibility that the man was mentally disturbed. Heidenreich said that the suspect is a 27-year-old German citizen, with a 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 didn’t live in Bavaria.
The attack comes at a sensitive time in Germany after the influx of some 1.1 million migrants last year and growing concerns about how the country will deal with them, particularly in Bavaria, their usual state of entry.
The suspect attacked several people with a 10-centimeter (four-inch) knife shortly before 5 a.m. (0300 GMT), police said.
Police spokesman Irwin Heumann said the 56-year-old victim who died — his age was initially given by authorities as 50 — was attacked aboard the train. He said it was not yet clear where the three wounded victims were assaulted.
The other victims were men aged 43, 55 and 58. Their names weren’t released.
Heidenreich said one of the survivors had “serious injuries” but that he had no details on whether they were thought to be life-threatening.
The suspect comes from the central state of Hesse, Heumann said. He had no further details but police and prosecutors planned a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
At the scene, police forensic experts in white coveralls marked more than 40 bloody footprints — some of them barefoot — on the train platform with chalk numbers and collected evidence, including a cellphone that was pulled from the gap between the train and platform.
Alongside the possibility of a politically motivated attack, Bavaria’s top security official, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, said officials also will look into whether he was mentally disturbed, “perhaps because of drug addiction.”
Grafing has some 13,500 inhabitants. The rail station where the stabbing happened is some way from the town center. It is served by a Munich commuter line and faster trains on the Munich-Salzburg main line.
Mayor Angelika Obermayr described Grafing as “an absolutely peaceful little Bavarian town.”
“Something like this is absolutely new and shakes people deeply — otherwise, they only know this kind of thing from television,” she said. “That it could happen here is absolutely stupefying.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
It sounds like more needs to be learned about the killer and his motive.
Angela Merkel will prevent the truth from being released.
I agree about Merkel. She is part of the One World Government. Since my spouse’s family live in Germany, there is a civil war stirring because these non-refugees (my spouse was a real refugee escaping communism and he did not come with great clothes, cellphones or money in his pocket, but came over as part of a family on Easter Sunday with only a change of underwear in his pocket and a few West German coins), while these terrorists come with $1500 in pocket, cellphones (not cheap anywhere in this world), well fed and even overweight when one would suppose they would look and be emaciated when walking so long and so far! They complain about the money they get (they don’t German and hence don’t work, they complain about the food, the lodgings (Germany pays German with space $14 a day per person take in these terrorists and in one case the terrorist would not take a plate of food from a Germany woman because she is a woman), they complain about the weather, and more. Pack ’em up and drop them off on the shore of Africa, or some other European country such as England which has sharia and a mayor that is a muslim – so sure they will take them in. Germany is a small country and they are hardworking people and these leeches will ruin the country, which in fact must be the main goal of NWO! Women are told not to go out at night and even to walk in groups – remember what happened to women on New Year’s at the train station? Enough is enough, dope ’em up and deport them to wherever!
Well if muslims are going to be terrorists, then the German people need to respond in kind. ON ALL muslim age 18-55. They are terrorists, and they came to Germany for no other reason. It is time for the whole of europe to wake the hell up and smell the rotten egg gas. It’s called Muslim men!
Whose sorry now with 1,1 million “refugees”/ unknown sympathizers running lose in an area about the size of Texas?. Has Germany set off a suicide bomb with 1.1. million pieces of shrapnel? All for the good of Islam? Their govt shouted akbar allah as they let the thundering herd, stampede of muslims into their country? They are now an occupied nation? I wonder if the people will hang merket from a lamp post like the Italians did to Mussolini in WWII? Or is it a rampage? Will Germany become the new Israel, plagued by suicide bombers before they built a wall around the nation? Someone. somewhere sent this hord of people to europe. It was not just some out pouring of a desire to live in Europe and get away from religious tyranny? They probably were more closely vetting to be good muslims then they are vetted by govt in the west to be law abiding citizens? And they bring pockets full of petro or Euro dollars to fund their trip and trouble making everywhere they go. And have done for 1300 years.
WAS a peaceful little town….They will become fewer & further apart now. We are no longer safe anywhere.
Karma