Berlin car crash: One dead and several injured as vehicle hits shoppers on crowded street

Man arrested after driving into people but police do not know whether it was deliberate

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  The car that was driven into a group of people, killing one and injuring a number of others in central Berlin. A police spokeswoman said the driver was detained at the scene after the vehicle had ploughed into a shopfront in a busy street in Charlottenburg. AFP

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  Emergency crews rush to assist the injured at Tauentzienstrasse near Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Reuters

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  The chaotic scene after the incident in the German capital. AP

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  A rescue helicopter lands on Tauentzienstraße at the site where one person was killed and eight injured when a car drove into a group of people in central Berlin, on June 8, 2022. - A police spokeswoman said the driver was detained at the scene after the car ploughed into a shop front in a busy shopping street in Berlin's Charlottenburg district. It was not clear whether the crash was intentional. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)

One person was killed and several injured after a car mounted the pavement and smashed into a shop window in Berlin on Wednesday morning.

A man is believed to have driven his car into people on a crowded shopping street, police said, but it was unclear whether he had done so deliberately or had suffered a medical emergency. He was arrested at the scene.

Photos showed the silver Renault lodged in the window of a high-end perfume shop. Police said three people had life-threatening injuries and six were seriously hurt, and one person was confirmed dead.

Police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said the car first hit a group of people on a street corner, before veering off the road a short distance later and ending up in the shop window. He said investigators were trying to reconstruct what happened.

The driver, a 29-year-old German-Armenian living in Berlin, was initially restrained by passers-by before being arrested by police, said Mr Cablitz. The silver Clio had a Berlin number plate.

The crash took place close to the site of a 2016 terrorist attack, Germany's worst in modern times, when a lorry drove into Christmas shoppers and killed 12. The attacker Anis Amri was later shot dead in Italy.

Four people were killed in a 2019 incident in Berlin when a driver suffered a seizure and drove his sports vehicle on to the pavement.

About 130 emergency workers were at the scene on Wednesday in one of Berlin's main shopping districts. A police helicopter landed in the road while rescuers treated the victims.

A witness to the aftermath was actor John Barrowman, who was unhurt but shaken after hearing “the bang and the crash … we came out and we just saw the carnage”.

An emotional Mr Barrowman told Sky News: “These people were just having breakfast at a cafe, it's just awful.”

He said he saw a body lying in the middle of the street, part of what was once the glitzy commercial hub of West Berlin and close to one of the city's best-known landmarks, the war-ravaged Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey visited the scene and said she was "deeply shocked... the police are working at full speed to clear up what happened".

A rescue helicopter landed at the scene after the car crash. AFP