They were on a final trip to Berlin, and the trip ended fatally for their teacher: on Wednesday morning, a 29-year-old drove his car into a group of people on Tauentzienstrasse and then into the window of a perfumery. Numerous people were injured, and the 51-year-old teacher from Bad Arolsen in northern Hesse died.
The day after, investigators and politicians speak of an “amoktat”. Of the 24 10th grade students at the Kaulbach School, a secondary school in Bad Arolsen (Waldeck-Frankenberg), seven are in the hospital, said Berlin’s governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) on Thursday.
A total of six people were life-threatening and three others were seriously injured. Among them is a teacher. The uninjured young people were looked after in their hotel by Berlin school psychologists. On Wednesday, the parents of the young people traveled by bus together with school psychologists from Hesse.
On Thursday, the school should start regular operations and at the same time receive the students who would be brought back from Berlin by bus, said the mayor of Bad Arolsen, Marko Lambion.
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The students should be cared for and collected by psychological staff on site, said Waldeck-Frankenberg’s District Administrator Jürgen van der Horst (independent) in a press conference scheduled by the school on Wednesday afternoon, reported the “Hessenschau”. It was “a bad day with bad news”. According to van der Horst, the school staff is in shock.
Hesse’s new Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) also expressed his deep dismay. “This shocking news from Berlin leaves me stunned and deeply affected,” he said in Wiesbaden. “My thoughts are with the victims, who were full of joy on a school trip in the capital.”
Hesse’s Minister of Education, Alexander Lorz (CDU), said that in addition to clarifying the facts, it was important “that the students be able to talk about the traumatic experiences”.
