BERLIN (AP) – A man drove a pedestrian car into a popular shopping district of Berlin on Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring at least eight others, rescue services said.
Police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said the man collided with people on a street corner around 10:30 a.m. before returning the car to the road and then crashing into a shop window around ‘an island beyond.
Fire spokesman Stefan Salzwedel put the death toll at eight. Police said more than a dozen were injured. Police said several of them were in serious condition.
It appears the driver was stopped by passers-by before he was quickly arrested by a police officer who was near the scene, Cablitz said. He said police are trying to determine if he deliberately drove pedestrians or if it was an accident, possibly caused by a medical emergency.
He said he had no further information about the man, who was driving a small car, or what he had told police so far.
A large number of rescue vehicles and rescuers rushed to the scene.
The incident happened at one end of the Kurfuerstendamm shopping promenade and next to Breitscheidplatz square, where an extremist carried out a vehicle attack on a Christmas market in 2016, killing 13 people.
In a 2019 incident in central Berlin, an SUV collided with a group of pedestrians and killed four people. The driver had suffered an epileptic seizure and veered off the sidewalk.