Hostage drama at Berlin supermarket ends – special unit frees woman after eleven hours
Special unit deployed taser to overcome perpetrator at Rewe store in Marienfelde. Woman suffered shock and is being cared for by emergency services.
Hostage drama at Berlin supermarket ends – special unit frees woman after eleven hours
An approximately eleven-hour police operation at a supermarket in the Berlin district of Marienfelde ended on Saturday morning with the liberation of a hostage. A man had held a woman captive in a Rewe store since late Friday evening and threatened her.
The incident began shortly after 22:00. The perpetrator took the woman prisoner in the shop in the south of the German capital. Police negotiated with him throughout the operation. At around 09:20 on Saturday morning, the specialist unit SEK moved in. Officers deployed a taser to neutralise the attacker and freed the woman from her situation.
The hostage suffered shock and was cared for by emergency services, as news agency DPA reported on Saturday morning. Further information about her state of health was not available at first.
During the operation, the kidnapper made several different demands according to police spokesman Florian Nath. Neither the content of these demands nor the motive for the act were disclosed by the authorities. The police also initially made no further statements about the identity of the arrested person.
The vicinity of the supermarket remained cordoned off during the entire operation. According to police, there was no danger to residents in the area. In addition to police officers, emergency services and fire brigade were also present at the scene.
A supermarket employee told media that the hostage had been a colleague. "She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," she explained to journalists. The police, citing the ongoing investigation, would neither confirm nor deny this information.
Source: Aktuálně.cz