BERLIN: A German woman accused of a mass stabbing attack that wounded 18 people at a train station in Hamburg suffers from mental illness, police said Saturday.

The suspect, a 39-year-old woman, is accused of going on a stabbing spree on Friday at the main station in Hamburg, stunning the northern city in the middle of the evening rush hour.

The woman has “very clear indications of a psychological illness,” police said in a statement, without giving further details on her condition.

They added there were no signs she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the attack, which left four victims seriously wounded.

The woman was subdued by two passersby and law enforcement officers, then taken into custody at the scene without resisting arrest, police said.

She was due to appear before a judge later Saturday.

Police say they have ruled out a “political motive” for the attack and believe the suspect acted alone.

The victims range in age from 19 to 85.

The four in serious condition were a 24-year-old man and three women, aged 24, 52 and 85, police said.

Emergency officials initially said their wounds were life-threatening, but police say all the victims now appear to be out of immediate danger.

The attack took place just after 6:00 p.m. (1600 GMT) Friday on one of the platforms in front of a standing train, German media reported.

The suspect was thought to have turned “against passengers” at the station, a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told AFP.

Some of the victims were treated onboard waiting trains in the station, German daily Bild reported.

Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.

Forensic police could also be seen walking up and down the platforms where the attack took place.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his shock in a call with the mayor of Hamburg.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” Merz said, according to a readout from a spokesman.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks with often jihadist or far-right extremist motivations that have put security at the top of the agenda.

The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld.

The investigation into that attack has been handed over to federal prosecutors after the Syrian suspect told the police officers who arrested him that he had jihadist beliefs.

The question of security — and the immigrant origin of some of the attackers — was a major topic during Germany’s recent election campaign.

Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU topped the February vote, which also saw a record score of more than 20 percent for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Last year, Germany toughened its legislation on carrying knives, now banned at public gatherings and on long-distance trains.

They are also banned in specific zones in some cities, including at Hamburg’s train station.
But experts and police unions have previously questioned whether such bans are effective.

MINNEAPOLIS: Former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo vividly remembers receiving a call around midnight from a community activist. The caller told him to watch a video spreading on social media of a white officer pinning a Black man to the ground, despite his fading pleas of “I can’t breathe.”
The dying man was George Floyd. The officer was Derek Chauvin. And Arradondo was the city’s first Black police chief.
“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Arradondo, 58, recalled in an interview ahead of the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter, and he knew immediately it would mean changes for his department and city. But he acknowledged he didn’t immediately foresee how deeply Floyd’s death would reverberate in the US and around the world.
“I served for 32 years,” he said. “But there’s no doubt May 25th, 2020, is a defining moment for me in my public service career.”
The video shows Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement outside a convenience store where Floyd had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Chauvin maintained the pressure for 9-1/2 minutes despite pleas from onlookers to stop, even after an off-duty firefighter tried to intervene and another officer said he couldn’t find a pulse.
‘Remnants of pain and anger’
Arradondo sat for the interview in a public library that was heavily damaged in the unrest that followed Floyd’s death. It’s on Lake Street, a major artery that saw some of the worst destruction, a street that he says still bears “remnants of the pain and anger of what occurred five years ago.”
Just down the block, there’s the empty shell of a police station that was torched during the riots. And within sight is a Target store and a Cub Foods supermarket that were looted. Storefronts remain boarded up. While some businesses were rebuilt, empty lots sit where others did not.
Arradondo still stands by his and Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct and let it burn. Protesters breached the building, and police — who were spread thin — didn’t have the resources to hold it. So he ordered his officers to evacuate.
“During the most significant crisis we’ve ever experienced, arguably in the state, when it’s life or death, I’ve got to go on the side of keeping people alive and safe,” he said.
Police reform
Arradondo subsequently helped launch an overhaul of policing in the city despite a resistant police culture and a powerful officers union. He testified against Chauvin in his 2021 murder trial, a rare breach of the “blue wall” that traditionally protects officers from being held accountable for wrongdoing.
Five years on, Arradondo, who retired in 2022, said he believes law enforcement agencies nationwide have made progress on police accountability — albeit incremental progress — and that police chiefs and sheriffs now move faster to hold officers responsible for egregious misconduct.
Arradondo was promoted to chief in 2017, and his elevation was greeted with hope among local African Americans who affectionately called him “Rondo.” But his department had a reputation for being too quick to use force and many were angry about police killing young Black men in Minnesota and beyond.
Arradondo said he wishes he had made more changes to the police department before Floyd was killed.
“I would have pushed harder and sooner at trying to dismantle some of the toxic culture that allowed that indifference to exist that evening, on May 25th, 2020,” he said. “I certainly would have invested more time elevating the voices in our community that had been pleading with police departments for decades to listen to us and change.”
Making amends
Arradondo just published a book, “Chief Rondo: Securing Justice for the Murder of George Floyd,” that explores leadership, justice and race, the broader impacts of policing, and the challenges of working within a flawed system. He closes it with a letter dedicated to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.
“I never had an opportunity to meet Gianna, but I wanted her to know that, even though I was not out there that evening, at that intersection when her father was pleading for help, that I heard him, and I was going to do everything I could to bring him justice,” he said.
He wanted to say the words that she has not heard from the four former officers who were convicted for their roles in George Floyd’s death:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your father being taken from you.”