Crime – Darmstadt – car as a weapon: perpetrators often psychologically unstable – panorama

Darmstadt / Witzenhausen (dpa / lhe) – people who intentionally injure others with their car are often mentally unstable, according to an expert. A study on the “car as a weapon” has shown that two thirds of these perpetrators have psychiatric priorities, said the criminal psychologist and head of the Darmstadt Institute for Psychology and Threat Management, Jens Hoffmann, the German press agency. Often personal conflicts or crises preceded the act. However, politically motivated acts are not included here.

In Witzenhausen in northern Hesse, a 30-year-old man drove a car into a group of schoolchildren on a sidewalk in front of a daycare center last Friday. An eight-year-old girl died of serious injuries in the hospital a few hours later. Two girls, ages seven and eight, were seriously injured. The Turkish national is under investigation on suspicion of murder. The police and the public prosecutor are investigating the suspicion that he may have intentionally driven the car into the group. The 30-year-old was placed in a psychiatric hospital. There are suspicions that he “suffers from a considerable psychiatric illness and, according to the current state of knowledge, this could have been the cause of the decision to act,” the investigators said.

According to Hoffmann, people who commit such acts often live in their own reality. “From their perception they have the impression that they have to save something,” said the psychologist. It happens that they feel that they have been treated unfairly and that this perception increases steadily. Triggers could be the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. “You are aiming for a kind of final then.” In some cases, the perpetrators had already lost touch with the outside world – for example in the case of the gunman in Trier, who, according to the authorities, lived in his car in the days before the crime.

The victimization of children in Witzenhausen could possibly be seen as a kind of “symbolic punishment of society” whose most vulnerable members were to be hit. In general, cases in which cars are used as weapons are relatively rare, although it sometimes remains unclear whether it is a suicide attempt or a targeted attack, said Hoffmann. At the same time he warned of imitation effects, which are very “powerful”. The perpetrators should therefore not be brought into focus when reporting such cases, in order not to trigger identification in other people.

After the rampage in Trier almost a year ago, Hoffmann had already spoken out in favor of a network of police as well as psychiatric and social institutions for the early detection of possible dangers.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211104-99-859170 / 2

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