A 33-year-old German man drove into a crowd in a pedestrian area in Leipzig on May 4, killing two of them and leaving three others with serious injuries. After other similar attacks with religious or political motivations, this Monday's attack appears to be driven by apparent mental health problems, according to the Prime Minister of the state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer.

First modification: 05/05/2026 - 00:44

Grimmaische Strasse is a mandatory pedestrian crossing in the center of Leipzig (Germany). It connects Augustusplatz, one of the largest squares in the country, with the market, the commercial heart of the city, and also academic, because many students from the University of Leipzig live there.

A 33-year-old German man with apparent mental health problems rammed his vehicle into that pedestrian artery on May 4, running over the passing crowd and causing the death of two people and life-threatening injuries to three others.

The man was immediately detained without resistance, according to the city's mayor, Burhard Jung.

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"We are mourning two deaths, currently three people seriously injured and many others who were injured," Jung said during a press conference, according to the 'Leipziger Volkszeitung' portal.

"It is impossible to find the right words for this horrible attack," he added.

For now, the authorities have ruled out that the attack has religious or political motivations, as has been the case with other similar episodes of violence that have occurred in Germany.

Armin Schuster, Minister of the Interior of the state of Saxony, said that the attack had been triggered by “an attack of madness with homicidal impulses” and added that “there are no indications that point to another interpretation.”

"If we say intentional multiple collisions, we are referring to an act that is committed in a state of frantic anger, which often goes hand in hand with psychological instability," said Schuster.

The Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, echoed this version and added that the suspect had voluntarily surrendered to police officers after driving his Volkswagen van-type car into the crowd.

A statement from the city indicated that it was an “event with mass casualties,” but offered consolidated numbers of injuries, beyond the three that Mayor Jung referred to.

It was later learned that 22 people had been injured as a result of the incident.

Police deployed a large-scale road closure operation before concluding that it was a lone attacker.

The Prosecutor's Office will investigate whether this is the case, he added, while the prosecutor who has assumed the investigations, Claudia Laube, stated that the hypothesis of murder and attempted murder, along with other crimes, is based on the hypothesis.

Leipzig Police Chief René Demmler specified that the suspect, a German citizen, was born in the country 33 years ago and resided in the region, but did not detail whether he had a criminal record.

Read alsoFour injured, one of them seriously, in an apparent intentional collision in Germany

painful precedents

This is not the first time that Germany has suffered an attack of this nature. In 2025, two people were killed in Mannheim when a 40-year-old man rammed his car into a group of pedestrians participating in the Paradeplatz carnival.

Weeks before, another mass attack took place during a union demonstration in Munich, resulting in two more fatalities and more than 40 injuries, several of them children.

In December 2024, five people were killed and more than 200 injured when a man of Saudi origin, a far-right sympathizer, drove his BMW car at full speed for 400 meters in the middle of a Christmas market in Magdeburg.

In 2018, a German man ran over four people in Münster (west) with a minibus before taking his own life, while in 2020, in Trier (also west), another individual suffering from a psychiatric disorder killed six people with his vehicle and injured 23.

"Once again, a city in eastern Germany is the victim of something like this," Teresa, a psychologist who was in Leipzig with her son, lamented to the EFE agency.

"And it's been 10 years since Berlin," the woman added, referring to the terrorist attack claimed by the Islamic State in which a Tunisian attacked a Christmas market with a high-tonnage truck, killing 13 people and causing more than 60 serious injuries.

Read alsoGermany: attack on protesters in Munich leaves at least 28 injured

With EFE, Reuters and AP

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