German police have shot a man dead after he stole a digger and used it to rampage through a quiet town.
The man, who has not yet been identified, hijacked the digger from a construction company in the small southern German town of Grünsfeld at around 1:35pm local time before driving it to Tauberbischofsheim, about five miles away.
Video footage of the chaos showed the man crashing the yellow digger into a JET petrol station as police appear to fire shots at him.
He was hit by gunfire at a car dealership in Tauberbischofsheim and resuscitated, but later died from his injuries.
He reportedly damaged several police vehicles, and is said to have seriously injured an officer.
Local police later said that while she had been trapped during the rampage, she has since been able to leave the hospital.
On X, local police said that there was now no longer any danger to the public following the ‘suspected rampage.’
Germany has been on high alert for weeks following the terror attack in the city of Magdeburg, in which Saudi doctor Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, smashed his rented SUV into a crowd at the Christmas market.
Video footage of the chaos showed the man crashing the yellow digger into a JET petrol station as police appear be firing shots at him
He reportedly damaged several police vehicles, and is said to have seriously injured an officer
Nine-year-old André Gleißner was killed and at least 235 people were injured in the horrifying rampage, dozens of whom are still in serious condition, according to authorities.
Police are still puzzling over why Abdulmohsen attacked the market, with the prosecutor indicating that the medic’s grievance about how Germany was treating Saudi dissident asylum seekers could be a possible motive.
Abdulmohsen – who was arrested beside the battered vehicle – has voiced anti-Islam views, anger at German immigration officials including former Chancellor Angela Merkel and support for far-right narratives on the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe.
Abdulmohsen reportedly willed his entire fortune to the German Red Cross, but did not include any political messages in the document.
He was remanded in custody on five counts of murder and several counts of attempted murder as well as causing grievous bodily harm, prosecutors said on Saturday night, but not so far on terrorism-related charges.
The 50-year-old is currently being held in a high-security prison near Magdeburg, where is constantly monitored by cameras and has to wear paper clothes ‘so that he doesn’t hang himself in his cell’, according to tabloid Bild.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
