Girl, 14, stabbed to death and friend injured by knifeman in Germany

A teenager has been stabbed to death and her best friend left injured by a knifeman who ran at them from an asylum shelter during their walk to school in Germany. Emergency services raced to the town of Illerkirchberg on Monday where they found the two schoolgirls — aged 14 and 13 — seriously injured. 

Police in the south-western city of Ulm — near Stuttgart and Munich — said paramedics resuscitated the older girl, named as Ece S., before she was taken to hospital after the attack, which happened at about 7.30am. ‘Despite all efforts by the doctors she died there,’ police said in a statement.

The younger girl, named as Nerea M., remains in hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries, they added. Both victims had German citizenship. Pictured: A police seal is attached to a door of a house near a crime scene.

A 27-year-old man was arrested inside a refugee shelter near the scene of the attack. The man, who was found with injuries and a knife, is of Eritrean origin, police said. Two other men were also detained. According to German newspaper Bild, the girls were walking through Illerkirchberg, home to around 4,700 people, to catch their bus to their secondary school in Ulm — which is around five miles to the north.

Their route to the bus stop took them a short distance past the asylum shelter, and they were attacked at around 7.30am. Horrified locals who witnessed the attack immediately alerted the emergency services, who rushed the school pupils to hospital. Meanwhile, the suspect is understood to have fled into a nearby building. Bild reported this to be a refugee shelter.

Police officers stormed the building and arrested all of its inhabitants. Officials said they took the chief suspect and two others to the police station — while the other innocent parties were released. Pictures from Illerkirchberg showed police officers in white forensic suits examining the scene of the attack (pictured).

Numbered spray-painted forensic markers covered a road and an adjacent wall (pictured). Later, candles and flowers were left at the scene by mourning locals, paying tribute to the girl who was killed in the attack.

Investigators are trying to determine a motive for the attack and whether the suspect and the girls knew each other. It was not immediately clear if the suspect lived in the housing that he was found in. Germany’s top security official expressed shock at the attack.

‘I grieve with the girl who was killed and hope fervently that the injured recovers her health,’ interior minister Nanct Faeser said on Twitter. ‘My thoughts are with their families at this time.’ In their statement, police urged people to refrain from stoking suspicion against refugees, asylum-seekers and other foreigners. 

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