NRW
Students feel better after knife attack
Only the yellow police markings are a reminder of the knife attack on two children in Duisburg. photo
© Christoph Reichwein/dpa
After the knife attack on two primary school students aged nine and ten in Duisburg, the children are doing a little better. The suspect remains silent about the crime and his motive.
The investigators still did not confirm media reports from the previous day that a bet on the social media platform Tiktok could have been the motive for the crime. The man’s cell phone was seized and is being evaluated, said a police spokeswoman. This continues because of the large amounts of data on the cell phone.
According to the investigation, the 21-year-old was said to have been with his father in the Marxloh district of Duisburg. He attacked the two children for no understandable reason. Authorities said the day before that he first stabbed a nine-year-old girl and then the ten-year-old boy.
The perpetrator had two knives and a hammer
According to the investigation, a passerby shouted at the knife attacker and threw a flashlight at him to get him away from the children. The injured children ran back to a primary school, where a teacher came to their aid.
A police spokeswoman confirmed that the flashlight was not an “actual weapon, but a defensive weapon.” Forensics repeatedly found traces of blood along the children’s approximately 600 meter long escape route.
According to investigators, two knives and a hammer were seized from the perpetrator as possible murder weapons. According to previous investigations, the murder weapon was one of the knives, the public prosecutor said. There was no blunt force impact on the children.
My own father stopped the attacker
According to the investigation, the attacker was ultimately stopped and disarmed by his father. The 69-year-old held his son until the police arrived, according to dpa information on Thursday. The suspect then allowed himself to be arrested without resistance. The public prosecutor’s office and police have not yet answered questions about a psychiatric assessment and the victim’s guilt.
The crime occurred on Wednesday around 12 p.m. on a street in a residential area in the Marxloh district of Duisburg. Victim protection officers from the Duisburg police and emergency pastors took care of the relatives and eyewitnesses. According to investigators, the person arrested is a German-Bulgarian.
It was the second knife attack on students in North Rhine-Westphalia within a week. Last week, four students at a Wuppertal high school were attacked with a knife. A 17-year-old high school student from Wuppertal is also in custody on suspicion of attempted murder.