A 33-year-old man already known to police has driven a car into a crowd of pedestrians on a busy shopping street in the eastern German city of Leipzig, killing two people and injuring around 20 others, in what authorities are treating as a suspected deliberate attack.
The victims have been identified as a 63-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man, both German citizens, Saxony police said.
The incident took place shortly before 5pm local time on May 4, when the vehicle entered Grimmaische Strasse, a pedestrian shopping street near the historic Augustusplatz square, and accelerated through the crowd before fleeing the scene. Officers later detained the driver close to St Thomas Church.
The suspect, a German national from Leipzig, was already known to police, according to local newspaper Leipziger Volkszeitung. Authorities said he was acting alone and that he posed no further threat. He is being investigated on suspicion of offences including murder and attempted murder.
“A car drove into several people on Grimmaische Strasse and fled. The driver of the vehicle has been arrested,” Saxony police said in a post on social media.
Saxony’s Minister-President Michael Kretschmer described the man as “psychologically conspicuous” and referred to the incident as a “suspected rampage attack”. The state’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster confirmed at a press conference that he was a “lone perpetrator”.
Leipzig Mayor Burkhard Jung confirmed the deaths and the arrest, saying that “the suspected perpetrator has been apprehended” and that there was no longer any danger to the public. He added: “People should go home and not worry any further,” and offered his condolences to the families of the victims.
Local fire service chief Axel Schuh said two of the injured were in a serious condition. “They were given first aid by emergency workers and taken to hospital by ambulance,” he said. About 40 firefighters, 40 paramedics and two helicopters were deployed at the scene.
A care centre has been set up at the Gewandhaus concert hall in central Leipzig to assist witnesses and anyone affected by the incident. No motive has yet been established, though the murder investigation indicates police are treating the act as deliberate.
The incident is the latest in a series of vehicle ramming attacks in Germany in recent years. In December 2024, a Saudi national drove a car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring more than 300. In February 2025, an Afghan driver rammed a vehicle into a march in Munich, killing a mother and her young daughter and injuring around 30 others.
Germany has been on high alert for ramming attacks since December 2016, when a Tunisian Islamic State sympathiser drove a lorry into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people.
