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Driver Slams Car Into German Carnival Crowd Driver Slams Car Into German Carnival Crowd
(32 minutes later)
BERLIN — A man who drove his car into a crowd on Monday at a carnival gathering in the German town of Volkmarsen, injuring several people, was arrested at the scene, the police said. BERLIN — A man drove his car into a carnival parade in a German town on Monday, according to the police, wounding more than a dozen people, including children, and shaking a country already on edge in the wake of a racist shooting that left several dead last week.
It was unclear if he drove his car into the crowd on purpose or if it was an accident. The police gave conflicting reports as to whether the crash was intentional. While one spokesman told reporters at the scene that the crash had been deliberate, a spokeswoman for North Hesse regional police later said that the motive was not yet clear.
The regional police in North Hesse, which includes Volkmarsen, said they had opened an investigation into the accident, saying it might have been intentional or caused by a technical problem in the vehicle or a medical emergency. Even with much under investigation, the authorities canceled all other carnival parades across the central state of Hesse, where the incident took place.
“At this point we are still looking at all possibilities,” said Frank Siebert, a spokesman for the police in North Hesse. The crash happened around 2:30 p.m. in the small town of Volkmarsen. It came days after a racist extremist killed nine people on Wednesday in the city of Hanau, 135 miles to the south. In that attack, the gunman was later found dead, alongside his mother.
The authorities canceled all other carnival parades across the state following the accident. Residents of Volkmarsen, a town of about 7,000, had gathered to celebrate Shrove Monday, when thousands of Germans dress up and throng the streets for carnival parades, which are particularly popular in Roman Catholic regions in the country’s west and south.
The crash happened around 2:30 p.m. on Shrove Monday, when thousands of Germans dress up and throng the streets for carnival parades, which are particularly popular in Roman Catholic regions in the country’s west and south. A silver Mercedes Station wagon, drove around a barrier and into the crowd, Waldeckische Landeszeitung, a regional newspaper, reported. Images from the area of the crash showed a scene of destruction. A silver Mercedes station wagon, believed to be the car that had crashed into the crowd, could be seen on the street outside a supermarket, surrounded by police officers and carnivalgoers dressed up as clowns and animals.
At least 15 people were injured, the paper reported, but it was not clear how seriously. Beside the vehicle were scattered the wheels of a child’s wagon, its wooden sides splintered.
Children were among the wounded, according to the paper. The police could not immediately confirm the number of injured. Witnesses told Waldeckische Landeszeitung, a regional newspaper, that the driver had evaded a barrier to ram the crowd.
The event comes days after Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, ordered an increased police presence across the country, especially around larger events, after a racist extremist killed nine people in Hanau on Wednesday. The gunman was later found dead, alongside his mother. The crash came just days after Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, had ordered an increased police presence across the country, especially around larger events such as carnival celebrations.