She heard a bang, says Miriam Braig, but at first she wasn’t really worried about what would happen in broad daylight in Würzburg, she thought. In addition, she lives very close to Barbarossaplatz, says the student, 26, where she is now. There is always a lot going on, sometimes a riot, especially now at the European Championship. But when she does leave the house to go shopping, she sees police forces everywhere, back to back, everything is cordoned off. She is advised to go home again.
It was not a riot like usual at the busy transfer point near the main train station. Here, where several train lines actually stop, go shopping, groups sit over a beer, it is unreally quiet in the evening. Police guard the cordoned off place. The bang Braig had heard was a shot. He had ended a gruesome attack early that evening. A man had stabbed three people and injured others, five seriously, two of whom were in mortal danger during the night. There is also a young boy among the injured, his father probably dead.
At around 5 p.m., the 24-year-old man apparently attacked people indiscriminately with a knife in the Woolworth department store. The three people died in the shop. The perpetrator ran into the street, in the middle of the busy square. Videos of the following scenes then circulated on the Internet at breakneck speed. They show a man in a beige sweater, a white FFP2 mask and a long knife in his hand. Passers-by try to stop it somehow, sometimes with their bare hands, backing away. “Hit him!” You can hear from the background.
Shortly afterwards, the police shot him in the thigh. Shot through, says the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) later, he will travel to Würzburg that evening. The 24-year-old perpetrator comes to a hospital and can be questioned.
“Wrong place at the wrong time”
This evening paralyzes Würzburg. The otherwise lively streets around the square – the many cafes, bars and restaurants – seem like a bell, everything is muffled. People sit on the terraces, but there is hardly any joking around. It’s been much less busy than usual since everything was allowed to open again, says a woman from Würzburg over a drink in front of a pub. You can see on people’s faces that everyone has heard of the attack. Many people asked here cannot believe what happened in their city. You hear about such an assassination, but right here? Würzburg, the residential, castle and wine town on the Main, is in shock.
Shortly after the crime, Interior Minister Herrmann spoke of a mentally ill man in front of a cluster of journalists. And about the fact that apparently many women are among the victims. The 24-year-old yelled “Allahu Akbar”, but it was too early to assess whether the man had acted religiously or politically. The Somali came to Germany in 2015, last lived in a shelter for the homeless and a few days ago was psychologically abnormal and forcibly treated psychiatric, says Herrmann. And then he uses an expression that one hears a lot in the city that evening: The victims, attacked at random, “were in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Osman Fornah, 23, also saw the videos on the net. In the evening he stands on the edge of the square, where the barrier tape is now fluttering and the police are stopping everyone who wants to go through. Forensics is still at work, anyone who lives on the square is escorted by officials. Fornah says he came from the direction of the train station and saw people running away. And then the man with the knife in hand. People tried to use chairs to knock the knife out of his hand, throw bottles at him. “To see that was bad,” says Fornah. He actually came to Würzburg from Ochsenfurt to go out with his friends, now he rubs his hand over his head, his forehead wrinkled. “That was bad.”
Maybe that way you can better understand what happened here?
Some people are drawn to the vicinity of the square in the evening. It’s still warm and it seems like they don’t want to be alone now. Some just stand there, look at the police and the square, some talk quietly. Maybe that way you can better understand what happened here?
Leona Drechsel is sitting on a stone staircase, it is long since dark. The 24-year-old student plays through the evening again and again in her mind. She looks worn out. If only she had started five minutes earlier, but hadn’t smoked that one cigarette. She’d rather not say what could have happened. Maybe she would have met the man with the knife.
She wanted to cross Barbarossaplatz to her friend, who lives on the other side. But when she started walking, a friend came running towards her. “She dragged me away, saying that people would run away and scream.” So they rushed to the flat of a friend from whom Drechsel came and stayed there for two hours, in safety. “A child was also attacked,” says Drechsel. She can’t get that out of her head, any more than those five minutes that may have saved her own life.
Many people remember 2016. In an attack on a train near Würzburg almost five years ago, a 17-year-old refugee from Afghanistan attacked travelers with an ax and a knife, then fled and attacked a stroller. The police eventually shot the man.
That occurred to her “immediately”, says Marie Voit, 25, who is standing next to Miriam Braig, who heard the shot. The two are neighbors on Theaterstrasse, which leads directly to Barbarossaplatz. She wore headphones and heard nothing, says Voit, but at some point the calls started. Something happened. And then it was there again in 2016. “Nowhere can you feel safe”, she thought then – and now again. Voit and her neighbor also pulled it outside again, now that everything is under control. At this time the candles for the victims were already burning in some churches in the city.