Jens Kleefeld is standing on a street near his Düsseldorf apartment. On the day of the knife attack, Kleefeld traveled to Würzburg for a friend’s wedding and witnessed the crime directly.Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa
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A man storms into a department store, takes a knife from the window and randomly stabs the people around him – he also attacks passers-by on the street. Now he is before the court.
June 25, 2021, shortly after 5 p.m.: Hossein Moradi observes a barefoot man in a Würzburg department store.
“I’m looking for a knife,” says the stranger to a saleswoman, according to the department store detective’s memory. Shortly thereafter, the supposed customer has a kitchen knife from a display in his hand, “probably 30 or 40 centimeters long”. And with that, the man suddenly stabs.
After a few moments, three women aged 24, 49 and 82 lost their lives. On the street, the probably mentally ill refugee apparently continues to stab passers-by indiscriminately. Four women, an 11-year-old girl and a 16-year-old, were seriously injured. There are also three slightly injured. One of the attacked remains unharmed.
“You don’t count on that”
Jens Kleefeld from Düsseldorf arrives by train in the Franconian town of Main this afternoon. In search of souvenirs for a wedding in the evening, he roams through the city center, near the crime scene at Barbarossaplatz. “I was on the phone and looking at my cell phone,” he says. As the 28-year-old looks up to avoid colliding with a lantern or something similar, he sees a woman fall to the ground. “There was a lot of blood,” he says. “Let’s not fool ourselves: you don’t count on that.”
Kleefeld pauses briefly and ends his conversation. “Of course, many people started screaming.” The management consultant sees a man with a knife less than 15 meters away. “People quickly entered the shops, locked the doors, and some even put up a portcullis.”
Then he discovered the then 16-year-old. When the youth, badly injured by the knife wounds, collapses on the street, Kleefeld grabs the boy. The 28-year-old hooks the victim and drags him to a café. “The boy had lost a lot of blood already.”
Kleefeld can hardly remember the first aid course he took a long time ago. Nevertheless, without further ado he squeezes the wounds as well as possible and talks to the injured person. “My plan was simply to keep him alive. I asked him what he was doing there when his last vacation was.”
Meanwhile, department store detective Moradi is on the heels of the attacker. Like other brave passers-by, the 57-year-old runs after him through the city center and talks to the fugitive. Short videos on the Internet show what happened in the university town after the attack. The suspected 33-year-old Somali – the authorities do not know for sure when he was born – staggers across the pavement. He is barefoot and holds a knife in his left hand.
A passer-by in a blue T-shirt tries to overpower the attacker with a broom. Other men have grabbed wooden chairs to keep the perpetrator at bay. A helper throws a bag in the direction of the 33-year-old, who at times seems a bit lost in the short videos.
“Can’t forget his black gaze”
Moradi, who fled Iran to Germany in 2005 and, like Kleefeld, has already received an award from the state of Bavaria for his courage, is finally able to overpower the stabber, according to his own account. He holds him down until the police take over. “I can’t forget his black eyes,” he said shortly before the Somali’s trial began.
From April 22nd, the Würzburg district court wants to find out in a security procedure what drove the 33-year-old to the knife attack. Shortly after the crime, speculation about his motive ran rampant. An act of terrorism, an Islamist attack, religious madness, the act of a madman? Investigators are now certain that the perpetrator is mentally ill and was not at fault during the attack. They rely on two psychiatric reports.
In 2015 the Solmalian was registered in Germany for the first time. Since then he has been noticed several times because of mental problems. According to their own statements, the authorities had no indication that the man could endanger other people up to the day of the crime.
The Munich public prosecutor’s office now wants to have the refugee permanently housed in a closed ward of a psychiatric hospital. “The investigations revealed no evidence of Islamist motives for the crime,” the agency said. The accused stated that “voices in his head” had instructed him to kill as many people as possible with a knife. He felt he was being treated unfairly in Germany and therefore wanted to take revenge.” So far, 27 days of hearing have been scheduled for the trial before a jury for three cases of murder and eleven cases of attempted murder.
Victims look at the process with “belly rumblings”.
Erwin Manger, contact person in Bavaria for victims of terrorist attacks and acts of violence, has spoken to victims and their relatives several times since the day, which was so upsetting for the university town. Months after the attack, they looked at the process with “some rumblings, because they might be called as witnesses,” says Manger, who is affiliated with the Bavarian Family and Social Center in Bayreuth. “This is a situation in which you meet the perpetrator again.” To his knowledge, some victims do not want to appear in court if possible, many are represented as joint plaintiffs by a lawyer.
If the perpetrator is innocent and sentenced under Section 63 of the Criminal Code (accommodation in a psychiatric hospital), “this can actually mean life imprisonment,” explains court spokesman Michael Schaller. External experts would then have to examine the man housed in the forensic department of a psychiatric hospital at regular intervals. And as long as his illness persists and he is classified as dangerous, release is out of the question. (dpa/red)
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