A Mental Patient Went on a Rampage With an Axe in Düsseldorf

At least that’s what the authorities say — the official line is that there’s no indication of terrorism. We still don’t have a Mohammed Coefficient, but we now know the attacker is from the Balkans — “the former Yugoslavia”, which nicely elides the question of whether he is a Serb, Croat, Slovene, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, or Kosovar. Hmm…

The cellphone video below was taken by an eyewitness. I’m told that the young man who took the footage has the unmistakable accent of a culture-enricher, and may be Middle Eastern.

Many thanks to Egri Nök for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling. WARNING: There are no instances of graphic gore in this video, but you will see large blood-splatters on the platform, so sensitive readers may want to skip it.

Below is an article about the attack from RP Online, also translated by Egri Nök:

Axe-Attack at Düsseldorf Main Train Station

Person on rampage allegedly 36-year-old from Wuppertal

Düsseldorf. A man armed with an axe has injured seven people at the Düsseldorf main train station on Thursday evening. According to information made available to our editorial staff, a 13-year-old girl is among the injured. The alleged attacker was arrested.

By Arne Lieb, Stefani Geilhausen, Klas Libuda, H. Pawlitzki

According to police, it is a 36-year-old man from the former Yugoslavia who lives in Wuppertal. He is said to suffer from mental illness. The man attacked passengers with an axe at Düsseldorf train station around 8.50 PM. Seven were injured, three of them gravely. One of the injured suffered a skull fracture.

Police and firemen were out in force; special forces (SEK) were at the scene, too. The main train station was cordoned off. Police call the act a rampage. There are no clues yet indicating a terrorist background.

The alleged attacker was arrested shortly after the attack in the close vicinity of the train station. He had fled over the tracks out of the train station and jumped from a railway bridge onto the Ellerstraße underpass. In doing so, he was seriously injured and is currently receiving treatment under police supervision.

Initially, the officers could not rule out the possibility of another perpetrator. A police helicopter circled over Düsseldorf. But there were no concrete clues indicating a second perpetrator at any time. Police held several suspicious persons at the train station in temporary custody to screen them. “At the moment, there does not appear to be a second perpetrator,” police spokesman Markus Niesczery said in the late evening.

Mayor Thomas Geisel arrived at the train station to get an overview of the situation and to thank the rescue forces. Police chief Norbert Wesseler also arrived at the train station late in the evening. The train station remained closed until approximately 12:30am (CET). Then all platforms except 13 and 14 were opened again. The forensics had not yet finished there. A cleaning squad came to cleanse the visible traces of the attack from train station.

Eyewitness tells of the consequences of the attack

A young woman who entered a commuter train bound for Mettmann told of a 13-year-old girl’s axe injury. The witness described the gaping wound on her upper arm as if someone had chopped with an axe into a tree. “I tended her wound and called her parents,” the woman reports. Luckily there was a doctor’s kit on the train from which the victim could be provided medical help.

A man in his late 20s was dragged into the train by his friend, apparently unconscious, the witness continues. He was injured in the head, but became responsive again later. Several passengers immediately looked after the man on the train. The train had stopped, everywhere were special forces policemen.

The conductor had closed the train doors, the witness reports. Some passengers demanded to leave the train. But as the doors could not be opened individually, everyone had to stay on board the train. Only when the Federal Police arrived did the conductor open the doors. He said: “You are now safe, the police are standing on the track.” The passengers were not able to leave the train station immediately. They were interrogated by police as witnesses.

Another witness describes the attacker

Tobias Schneeberger (30) from Ratingen was also an eyewitness. He says that around 8:50pm he and his girlfriend and their four children (nine months, two, five, and seven years) were waiting at platform 10 for the S6 to Cologne. At track 13 the S28 to Mettmann arrived. As Schneeberger watched, the perpetrator exited the train and ran up and down the platform with an axe.

He describes the man as between 30 and 40 years old, his appearance reminiscent of a drug addict. People ran away screaming; bags were flying all over the place. The trains sounded their horns without stopping, “to jar the attacker”. The attacker then ran from platform 13 to platform 10. “I concluded this from the movement of the screaming people,” said Schneeberger. He pushed his girlfriend and his children into the elevator by which they were standing. “I placed myself in front of the children, so that they could not see the man”. The elevator took them downstairs and they left the train station.

Video transcript:

00:03   Hey — guys — here is…
00:09   We are at the main train station, someone next to us ran amok with an axe
00:14   and attacked people, at the Düsseldorf train station.
00:19   He just ran along the tracks, in this direction.
00:26   … out of the train station …
00:41   You couldn’t do anything, I swear by my mother, I was next to it live.
00:45   Neither I nor anyone could do anything.
00:48   The dude just came with an axe and battered people.
00:53   I’ve seen a lot, but nothing like that. Right next to me,
00:57   he started battering people with an axe.
01:01   The Düsseldorf train station is full of police.
01:04   Sick.
01:16   Is there a doctor here, is there a doctor here?
01:28   Please let him shut off here. Terrible. —Let him shut off. Please move on.
01:31   I swear by my mother I’m shocked. —What happened? Terrible.
01:34   —Let him shut off. Terrible. —Let him shut off.
01:38   Brother, someone attacked people with an axe. —And now he is?
01:42   I swear by my mother, I have never seen anything like that, brother.
01:45   We were standing at track 14, waiting for the train,
01:49   suddenly he came out of the train, I think, and began attacking people with an axe.
01:54   Just like that, out of nowhere, two meters away from us;
01:57   no one could help, it was impossible, we stood and yelled.
02:01    

7 thoughts on “A Mental Patient Went on a Rampage With an Axe in Düsseldorf

  1. As Robert Spencer pointed out, Yugoslavia ceased to exist 25 years ago.

    Looks like the German Police are being disingenuous again. Bosnia? Kosova?

  2. So now the German authorities refuse to identify the perpetrator by ethnicity…
    They had no problem identifying the Roma involved in draining the German welfare system as “Romanians and Bulgarians” just a few days ago, nor the Roma who kicked the woman down the stairs in a subway station as a “Bulgarian”.
    Now the attacker is “Yugoslavian”…
    You can’t risk to stigmatize a whole group by admitting a monster belongs to it, that’s an awful lot of people who might be labeled as bad. That’s why you risk to stigmatize an even bigger group. Well, that’s just fine…

    • don’ t be so harsh! Right after the arrest, the sergent on duty diagnosed severe mental disorder not related to the 95% muslim kosovar origin of the perp.
      Hey, I could save a lot of money to seek therapy in the closest by police station instead of leafing out 95€ p.h for a shrink.Sarc off.
      p.s. how can it be that a people ,kosovars i.e. , with their 2 or 3 million population are so grotesquely overrepresented in crime?Nothing in their genes?

  3. BBC’s first report, and France24, was that it was a “Yugoslav”, later they changed it that it was someone from the “former Yugoslavia”. If they didn’t know nationality or ethnicity, they could have said he was from Balkan. No, they needed to use a defunct country, non existent for 25 years. I don’t see anything a coincidence any more. Someone needed to stain the various nations in former Yugoslavia, or they needed to stain Slavs. So it suits them to say Kosovan or Albanian when the autonomy of their terittory and their indepencence is in question, but not when identifying a crimnal or terrorist. Melania Trump is a Yugoslav too. And I am an Austro-Hungarian.

  4. There is no such nationality as “Kosovan”! Kosovo is a Serbian region that was invaded by Albania and NATO watched as they killed off any Serb and Gypsy that couldn’t flee fast enough, only to later propose “since the majority of the citizen are Albanian, it should be a free region.” Don’t forget what the main religion of Albania is, and those from the Balkans are much more tame than the rest of the pigs, Kosovo might’ve been but a precedens to what awaits all of Europe, less we protect our herritage!

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