A 26-year-old man was arrested Saturday on charges related to the stabbing deaths of three people at a Solingen, Germany festival the day before.
The suspect, a Syrian citizen who applied for asylum in Germany, turned himself into police and “stated that he was responsible for the attack,” the Dusseldorf Police and the prosecutor’s office said in a statement Saturday (via NBC News). “This person’s involvement in the crime is currently being intensively investigated.”
Following the knife attack that killed three people and injured eight people — four of whom remain hospitalized in life-threatening condition — police apprehended two people, including a 15-year-old, they believed were involved in the incident. However, North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister Herbert Reul said Saturday that those two people were not the perpetrator and that “the real suspect is the one that we’ve arrested just now.”
A 67-year-old man, a 56-year-old man, and a 56-year-old woman were killed in the knife attack in Solingen, a western German city that was holding a “Festival of Diversity” to celebrate its 650th anniversary.
A German DJ named Tobias Topic was playing music during the incident, and was told by security personnel to continue his set amid the attack in order to prevent mass panic. Ultimately, Topic’s set was canceled after 15 minutes.
Through an Islamic State-run news agency, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, adding that the attacker targeted Christians and was a “soldier of the Islamic State”; German police are still investigating those claims. A police spokesperson added the suspect targeted the necks of the victims, CNN reported.
“This evening we are all in shock, horror and great sadness in Solingen. We all wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together and now we have to mourn dead and injured people,” Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach wrote on social media after the attack. He said he had “tears in [his] eyes” over those lost.
In recent weeks, a similar stabbing attack occurred at a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance event in Southport, England, and a thwarted terror plot in Vienna led to the cancelation of Swift’s concerts in that Austrian city.