Agency Report –
He fled the scene and then stabbed an unrelated man in the back on the street before being shot and severely wounded by police near the city’s main train station, law enforcement said.
According to prosecutors, after those attacks the suspect twice tried to find victims near Essen’s Old Synagogue “without, from his perspective, finding suitable persons to target.”
They said he acted “out of a radical Islamist conviction directed against Germany’s free democratic order,” adding the assaults were “capable of affecting the internal security of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
Federal prosecutors said they assumed the case because of its “special significance.”
The suspect remains in hospital under police guard.
