The alleged perpetrator of the bloody attack in a Duisburg gym is now also suspected of having fatally injured a person nearby days earlier. The 26-year-old Syrian suspect is accused of inflicting a significant number of stab and cut wounds on a victim on Easter Sunday, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor announced on Thursday. The victim died a few hours later.
After the evaluation of traces found at the crime scene and on the suspect’s shoes, there is now an urgent suspicion against him because of this act, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor explained in a statement. She therefore took over the investigation into the fatal attack on a 35-year-old on the night of Easter Sunday in Duisburg’s old town.
“Der Spiegel” and the “Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” had previously reported online about the result of the trace analysis.
Four people were seriously injured in the knife attack on the gym on Tuesday last week. According to information from Wednesday, a 21-year-old was still in mortal danger.
Arrested thanks to tips from friends
The 26-year-old Syrian is in custody. Special police units arrested the suspect on Sunday night after information from two of the man’s acquaintances in his Duisburg apartment near the gym.
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.
According to earlier information from the police and public prosecutor’s office in Duisburg, the Syrian had applied for asylum in Germany in April 2016. In 2018 he was noticed in two cases of minor property crimes. Both procedures have been discontinued.