The Tiergarten district court sent the 29-year-old gunman from Breitscheidplatz to a psychiatric hospital one day after the crime. This was announced by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office on Twitter late Thursday afternoon. This had announced a corresponding application in the afternoon.
Gor H. killed a woman and injured more than 30 people, including several students, during his rampage in City West on Wednesday.
He is charged with one completed murder and 17 attempted murders. The prosecutor initially accused him of one murder and 32 attempted murders. The court agreed only partially. For “less seriously injured people” “a killing intent is no longer accepted,” it said.
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the death drive on Kurfürstendamm was a deliberate act. What was still unclear on Wednesday has now been substantiated, said spokesman Sebastian Büchner on Thursday afternoon: “There are indications that there was a mental impairment in the accused, which was also the reason for yesterday’s crime.”
Drugs were found during the searches, and the 29-year-old has now released his defense attorney from the duty of confidentiality, “in this respect there is a lot to be said for paranoid schizophrenia,” said Büchner. So far, there is no evidence that the man was ever mentally conspicuous.
Further investigations should now show whether the man’s illness is actually the cause of what happened. According to the information, the public prosecutor’s office is assuming incapacity. “At the moment, as far as this application for the placement order is concerned, the first prognosis is that it is more likely that he acted in a state of incapacity than that he was actually guilty himself,” said Büchner.
In addition to murder and attempted murder, the public prosecutor’s office accuses the 29-year-old of dangerous interference in road traffic. The characteristics of the murder are insidious and commissioned with means that are dangerous to the public.
According to the current findings of the investigators, Gor H. drove a Renault Clio onto a sidewalk near Rankestraße at Breitscheidplatz on Wednesday morning and bumped into several people there. He then continued on the road in the direction of Wittenbergplatz, hitting another person and, after colliding with a car, came to a stop in the window of a shop near Marburger Straße. Witnesses arrested the exiting driver on site and handed him over to the police, according to a joint report by the police and the public prosecutor.
The teacher of a group of 24 students from Hesse died at the scene of the accident. According to the announcement, a total of 32 people were injured in addition to the driver. Accordingly, a colleague of the teacher was seriously injured – according to the public prosecutor, he is in mortal danger on Thursday afternoon. In addition, seven young people from their group of students were taken to hospital with serious injuries, and seven students were also slightly injured.
According to the police, 17 other passers-by were injured to varying degrees and received medical treatment. 50 other people had received psychological care.
The gunman was also injured and taken to a hospital, after which he was transferred to the criminal police, the police and prosecutor said in a statement.
The man “deliberately drove his vehicle” into a first group of people on the corner of Ku’damm and Rankestrasse and then into a group of students and teachers on Tauentzienstrasse, said the spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office.
There is no evidence of a terrorist background, Büchner explained, and an accident can also be ruled out. A letter of confession was not found.
Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) said on Thursday in the House of Representatives that the suspect, who is of Armenian origin, was naturalized in Germany in 2015.
