A man randomly stabbed pedestrians with a knife in downtown Würzburg. Three people die after the attack, nine others are injured. According to the report, inner voices ordered the paranoid schizophrenic man to do the deed. Now he has to go to psychiatry permanently.
The verdict against the Würzburg knife attacker responsible for the deaths of three women is final. The regional court in the Bavarian city announced that no appeals had been filed. This means that the 32-year-old man will be permanently housed in a psychiatric ward. Experts classified the defendant, who is from Somalia, as not guilty in the proceedings, which have been ongoing since April, because of paranoid schizophrenia. The verdict against him was issued last week.
The man had killed three women with a knife on June 25, 2021 in downtown Würzburg. He also attempted to kill ten other people. Nine of them were injured, including an 11-year-old girl and a 16-year-old.
The Munich public prosecutor had accused the man of three counts of murder and attempted murder, among other things. For reasons of space, the security procedure took place in an event hall in Estenfeld near Würzburg.
According to two independent expert opinions, the Somali refugee is paranoid schizophrenic and heard voices that would have ordered him to commit the crime. As long as the man's illness, paranoid schizophrenia, persists and he is classified as dangerous, release from the psychiatric ward is out of the question.
"The accused chose the victims arbitrarily," senior prosecutor Judith Henkel said in her closing statement. The Somali acted insidiously and out of hatred for Germany, where he was treated unfairly and felt persecuted by the secret service. Voices in his head would have encouraged the man to act. "His intention was to kill as many people as possible (...)." There were no indications of a political motive or misogyny.
