POTSDAM: An employee at a residence for disabled people outside Berlin accused of killing four people and wounding a fifth was placed in urgent psychiatric care on Thursday.
In a case of shocking violence that grabbed headlines in Germany, the slain victims, two women and two men, were stabbed with a knife late on Wednesday at the facility in Potsdam.
The victims were residents at the site, which police had originally identified as a clinic. A 51-year-old female staff member was immediately taken into custody and state prosecutors sought a warrant for her arrest on suspicion of manslaughter from a local court.
However Wilfried Lehmann, chief prosecutor in Potsdam, said the magistrate “ordered her placement in a psychiatric clinic” due to “pertinent evidence” of a mental illness.
He declined to offer further details on the killings so as not to jeopardise the “investigation which is still getting started”.
A spokeswoman for the state prosecutors had said earlier that the killings did not bear the “characteristics of (premeditated) murder” while police said the dead were subjected to “intense, extreme violence”. Specialised teams were dispatched overnight to collect evidence from the crime scene.
The facility, run by the Lutheran Church’s social welfare service, specialises in helping those with physical and mental disabilities, including blind, deaf and autistic patients.
Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2021