A day after the fatal knife attack on a bank employee in Regensburg, the 20-year-old suspect has been remanded in pre-trial detention on suspicion of murder. Investigators in the Bavarian city announced this on Friday. The suspected motive for the crime was not yet clear, they said. The suspect reportedly showed the victim a note and attacked him almost immediately afterward.
The perpetrator's motive is currently "still relatively unclear," said Robert Fuchs, head of the relevant criminal police unit, speaking to journalists. According to the current state of the investigation, the man showed the bank employee a note in a customer waiting area, on which "among other things something about a robbery and a bank robbery" was written.
He then held up a kitchen knife and attacked the bank employee, who was sitting behind a counter, "relatively quickly," stabbing him several times. The victim had no chance to hand over money given the speed of events, said Fuchs, referring to video footage from the bank.
The severely injured bank employee was pulled into another room after the attack by witnesses, investigators say, including a customer couple who were in the bank with their few-months-old child. The suspect reportedly then withdrew to the rear area of the branch, while those present called the police via emergency call. Special forces arrested the 20-year-old "without resistance" after around three hours, in the area of a toilet inside the bank.
According to police, witnesses managed to bring the injured employee and themselves to safety through a window, with the support of emergency responders. The man, who was not further identified by investigators, later died in hospital.
Two further bank employees were evacuated from the branch during the ensuing hours-long major operation by emergency services "without contact with the perpetrator," before special forces moved in. At the height of the operation, around 370 officers were deployed. On Thursday, it was initially not entirely clear whether a hostage situation had occurred. However, police had already ruled that out during the operation.
A custody judge issued an arrest warrant on Friday, as requested, against the accused on suspicion of murder in conjunction with attempted aggravated extortion involving robbery. He was taken to a prison. There are currently no indications of a mental illness in the suspect, said authority representative Thomas Schug on Friday. However, he will routinely undergo a psychiatric evaluation as the case proceeds.
The suspect, a German citizen, was already known to police on several occasions, investigators say. Most of these entries related to brief missing-persons reports due to absences from youth welfare facilities. The city of Regensburg imposed a weapons ban on him in 2023, after he was caught with a knife and an electric shock device during two separate checks.
Only in the night to Wednesday, the man had reportedly reported to a police station in Regensburg himself, stating among other things that he had just thrown a beer bottle into its courtyard. He was taken into custody, though there were no grounds for detention. According to police, the man had lived in Berlin for the past two years and had only returned to Regensburg in June. Investigators intended to request information about him from other authorities, among other things.
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