The police in Nuremberg are searching for a man who stabbed three women in the district of St. Johannis. Despite extensive searches, the police so far lack any trace.
Within three and a half hours, the unknown culprit had attacked the women on Thursday evening. The crime scenes were only a few hundred meters apart. Two 26 and 34 year old women were temporarily in mortal danger. She and the third victim, a 56-year-old pedestrian, had to be operated on. The unmediated attacks, according to Roman Fertinger's police chief, Roman Fertinger, hit "people on their way home".
According to the description of the victim first attacked, the suspect is supposed to be a dark blond man with a three-day beard: 25 to 30 years old, 1.75 to 1.80 meters tall, of normal stature. A man matching the perpetrator's description fled from a police patrol.
"Classify attacks as insidious"
The police press office said, "Please be careful, the offender could still be armed with a knife." A hundred riot police are looking for the murder weapon.
Thilo Bachmann, head of the Kriminaldezernates in the police headquarters Middle Franconia, said: "We urgently need instructions to specify the investigation measures." The special commission "Johannis" works with 40 officials on the reconnaissance of the attack series. The victims did not know each other.
"We have to assume that all three attacks are classified as insidious," said prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke. Therefore, the prosecution goes "in all three cases of attempted murder". The investigators currently have no evidence of a terrorist background.
Police President Fertinger also spoke at the press conference about the statistics on knife attacks in his area of responsibility: "Over the past five years, we have had a tendency to increase Messer's device by 30 percent," said Fertinger. These are mainly about relationship acts, attacks in public space as in the current case, however, are relatively rare. But in the past five years, these too have increased by ten percent in the area of the police headquarters in Central Franconia, and by 40 percent in Nuremberg, said Fertinger. "Against this background, it is particularly important to clear up these deeds now."
Whether the Nuremberg numbers reflect a nationwide trend can not be said, since the "Tatmittel knife" in police crime statistics is not recorded. Only individual federal states take up the feature, in some cases it can only be local police directorates.
Since there are no uniform rules, it is also not clear what exactly is meant by the "Tatmittel Messer". For some definitions, the knife does not have to be used, it is enough if a suspect has it. Also, in some cases, the agent is detected when someone has defended himself with a knife.