Three armed men stopped a bus on a motorway in Bavaria yesterday, robbing passengers at gunpoint in what German media labelled a “Wild West” crime.
The hold-up happened at 3:30am. According to local police, the assailants were travelling in a van and signalled to the bus to stop.
After the bus driver had pulled over at the Aiglsbach exit on the A93, the men moved to board the bus, pretending to be there to carry out an inspection.
Once aboard, the assailants started threatening the bus passengers with guns and robbed them of cash, personal documents and valuables.
After the robbery, the three men got back into their white Volkswagen van – which reportedly had German plates – and left the scene in the direction of Munich. Nobody onboard the bus was harmed.
The police started a manhunt. At tike of writing, nobody has been apprehended. The Landshut police are asking potential witnesses to report what they saw.
No further information on the bus or the origins of the passengers has been made public.
The A93 links Munich with Regensburg and Northern Bavaria. It is also the fastest connection between Munich and Prague, the capital of Czechia. The hold-up happened about 70 kilometres north of Munich.
The incident has highlighted fears of deteriorating public security in Germany. Prominent media critic Argo Nerd wrote on X: “Armed men hold up a bus at night. Not in Latin America but in Lower Bavaria.”
Bus robberies are historically rare in Germany although the Aiglsbach robbery is the second such incident this year.
In January, four armed criminals – three men and a woman – robbed the passengers on a Turkish bus that had stopped at a motorway rest area on the A3 near Niedernhausen in the State of Hesse.
The assailants stole several mobile phones before fleeing in a black car. So far, no suspects have been apprehended.
A spokesman for the Hesse police told German media at the time that there was no indication that criminals were focusing on buses and that no added security measures were necessary for such vehicles.
