1 dead, 8 injured after driver collided with pedestrians in Berlin

Rescue services said a man drove a car into pedestrians in a popular shopping district in Berlin on Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring at least eight others.

Police spokesman Tilo Kaplitz said the man hit people on a street corner at about 10:30 a.m. before putting the car back on the road and then crashing into a shop window around another building.

Fire service spokesman Adrian Wenzel told NTV that five people were seriously injured, while three others were seriously injured. Police said more than a dozen were injured.

Kaplitz said the driver was apparently arrested by bystanders before being quickly arrested by a police officer who was near the scene. He said police are trying to determine whether he deliberately hit pedestrians or whether it was an accident, possibly due to a medical emergency.

Police later tweeted that the driver was a 29-year-old German of Armenian origin living in Berlin. They did not give further details, and it was not immediately clear what if he had said anything to them during interrogation.

A large number of rescue vehicles and paramedics were present at the site.

Berlin Mayor Franziska Joffe tweeted that she was “deeply shocked by this incident”.

The incident took place at one end of the Kurfuerstendamm shopping street and next to Breitscheidplatz, where an extremist carried out a car attack on a Christmas market in 2016.resulting in 13 deaths.

In a 2019 accident in central Berlin, an SUV drove into a group of pedestrians, killing four people. The driver had an epileptic fit And swerved on the sidewalk.