Nearly six months after the knife attack at Hamburg Central Station, the prosecutor’s office has filed security proceedings against the suspect. The 39-year-old suffers from “paranoid schizophrenia associated with a misunderstanding of reality.” Therefore, he should be classified as incapable of guilt.
In the attack at the end of May, 15 people were injured, some of them critically. Specifically, the defendant, among other things, was charged with attempted murder in 21 cases. The Hamburg Regional Court will now decide on the admissibility of the application. The trial is scheduled to begin next Tuesday and, according to a court spokesman, will be held behind closed doors.
On May 23, the woman is said to have randomly stabbed a waiting passenger with a paring knife on the platform of Hamburg Central Station without warning before being stopped by a passer-by.
The suspect should be permanently placed in a mental hospital
The woman, who lived without a fixed address at the time of the crime, was classified as mentally ill immediately after the incident and was temporarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital. According to the public prosecutor, expert reports now confirm that the ability to understand is thought to have been completely lost. Therefore, he applied for protection with the aim of permanent admission to psychiatric treatment.
The defendant’s alleged scissor attack on his father some five months before the knife attack at the main train station should also be included. The trial process was initially carried out by the public prosecutor’s office in Lübeck, but later Hamburg sent. According to the Hamburg prosecutor’s office, the father suffered multiple stab wounds. He survived because of the intervention of the woman’s mother. At that time, the Lübeck district court refused placement in a psychiatric hospital, and an appeal against the decision was rejected by the Lübeck regional court.
Discharged from the clinic in Hamburg just one day before the attack
In February, the woman was said to have assaulted a child on a playground at Hamburg airport and attacked a fellow patient after being admitted to a psychiatric clinic. After his release, according to the Lower Saxony Ministry of Health, he was hospitalized again for three weeks.
The 39-year-old had just been released from a psychiatric hospital in the Cuxhaven district the day before the knife attack at Hamburg Central Station. According to the clinic, there were no medical findings at that time to justify further accommodation.
