Suspect is a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, police say

Police officers investigate the site in Reutlingen, Germany, where a man with a knife killed a woman and injured two people. PHOTO: THOMAS KIENZLE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES



By CHRISTOPHER ALESSI and WILLIAM WILKES

REUTLINGEN, Germany—A Syrian man used a long knife to kill a woman here on Sunday in an apparent personal dispute, and injured two other people before being detained, police said.

The suspect is a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, the police said. The man was known to the police and had been charged in the past with assault.

The incident quickly made national news in a country on edge in the wake of a spate of violence across Europe that has fanned fears of a rising terror threat. Another asylum seeker, registered as a 17-year-old Afghan, injured five people in an ax attack last Monday in Würzburg, a two-hour drive from here.

But unlike the Würzburg assault, in which Islamic State claimed responsibility, the Reutlingen incident appeared to be the result of a personal dispute, police said.

“There is no evidence that it was religious or terrorist-motivated,” a police spokesman said.

Germans have been anxious amid a series of high-profile violence in Europe, including the July 14 truck attack in Nice, France; the Würzburg assault; and Friday’s shooting spree in Munich that killed nine.

The police initially described the man’s weapon as a machete but later said it was a long knife, likely a kitchen knife. They said the man and woman had some kind of personal dispute, but said they didn’t yet know the nature of their relationship. Police said they weren’t able to immediately identify the woman and didn’t know her nationality.


It also wasn’t clear when the man came to Germany. More than 300,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in Germany since January 2015, according to government figures. Reutlingen, a city of 110,000, is in the southwest German state of Baden-Württemberg.

“According to what is currently known, this was a lone attacker,” the Reutlingen police said in a statement. “It is highly unlikely that there is any danger to the public in and around Reutlingen.”

The man had been arguing with the woman he killed before attacking her, according to emergency calls from bystanders, the police said. He then fled on foot onto a central city street near the main bus station, also injuring a woman in a car and a man at a Turkish snack shop. Neither injury was life-threatening.

Then, while crossing the street, the man was hit by a car and immediately arrested.

“Thank God the attacker was captured,” Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl said in a statement. “My thoughts are with the victims and the relatives of the dead woman and the injured.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/man-kill...gen-1469379071