After the knife attack in a Duisburg gym, a DNA trace of the suspect led to a possible further bloody crime. During the DNA examination, a connection between the suspected Islamist and an act in Duisburg over the Easter weekend in which a 35-year-old party guest was stabbed was found, said Attorney General Holger Heming on Thursday of the German Press Agency.
Four people were seriously injured in the knife attack on the gym. According to the Duisburg police, a 21-year-old was still in mortal danger on Wednesday and was treated in the hospital. A 32-year-old victim had been released from the clinic a few days ago, and the other two victims of the attack – two 24-year-old men – are now back home, a police spokesman said.
As NRW Minister of Justice Benjamin Limbach (Greens) informed the legal committee of the state parliament on Wednesday, the assassin’s attack had taken place in the men’s changing room and shower of the gym. Three of the victims were stabbed in the torso and one was stabbed in the thigh. The arrest warrant for the 26-year-old Syrian was issued for three counts of attempted murder and four counts of dangerous bodily harm.
Special police units arrested the suspect on Sunday night after information from two of the man’s acquaintances in his Duisburg apartment near the crime scene. He is in custody.
On Tuesday, the investigators had expressed the suspicion that the knife attack on the gym could have been a terrorist attack. There are indications of an Islamist motivation for the arrested Syrian, spokesmen for the Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office had announced. This was the result of the analysis of the suspect’s mobile phone. RTL West had previously reported on the Islamist finds on the mobile phone.
The suspect will also be evaluated psychiatrically, the investigators had said. According to the police and public prosecutor’s office, the Syrian had applied for asylum in Germany in April 2016. In 2018 he was noticed in two cases of minor property crimes. However, both procedures have been discontinued.
