The alleged perpetrator of the bloody attack in a Duisburg gym is suspected of having fatally injured a person days earlier. The 26-year-old Syrian suspect is accused of inflicting a significant number of stab and cut wounds on a victim on Easter Sunday, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor said. The victim died a few hours later.
After the evaluation of traces found at the crime scene and on the suspect’s shoes, there is now an urgent suspicion against him because of this act, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor explained in a statement. She therefore took over the investigation into the fatal attack on a 35-year-old on the night of Easter Sunday in Duisburg’s old town. The Mirror and the West German General Newspaper had previously reported on the result of the trace analysis.
Four people were seriously injured in the knife attack on the gym in mid-April. According to information from Wednesday, a 21-year-old was still in mortal danger. The 26-year-old suspect is in custody. Special police units arrested him on Sunday night after information from two of the man’s acquaintances in his Duisburg apartment near the gym.
On Tuesday, the investigators expressed the suspicion that the knife attack in the gym could have been a terrorist attack. There are indications of an Islamist motivation for the arrested person, said spokesman for the Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office. This was the result of the analysis of the suspect’s mobile phone.
Reul: Suspect’s silence “untypical for an assassin”
The suspect himself is silent in custody. His alleged motives are therefore still unclear, said NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) in the North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Committee. The suspect’s silence is “atypical for an assassin who wants to classify his crime” and also for a gunman who, in his view, has nothing left to lose.
Texts and images found on the 26-year-old indicated at first glance an Islamist connection, said Reul. But even the act of committing a crime does not go with an attack or an amok act. The perpetrator did not stab at the entrance to the studio, but first went into the changing room. After that he calmly left the building and did not launch any further attacks.
According to earlier information from the police and public prosecutor’s office in Duisburg, the man had applied for asylum in Germany in April 2016. In 2018 he was noticed in two cases of minor property crimes. Both procedures have been discontinued.