At least one person died and 16 others were injured this Saturday during the festival of the LGBTI Pride Day in a multiple collision with a vehicle whose driver fled after leaving the car that he used against the participants of the event held in the center of Berlin.
“At the moment we are talking about 17 directly affected, and one of them died after attempts to revive him,” explained Florian Nath, spokesperson for the Berlin Police.
“We have several people seriously injured whose lives are feared,” he added.
Police officers and security personnel work near the site where several people were injured on the sidelines of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade in Berlin. Photo: EFE/EPA/CLEMENS BILAN
Previously, another spokesperson for the Berlin Police explained that around 10:00 p.m. (20:00 GMT) a car entered the Tiergarten from Lennéstrasse, injuring several people, something after which the authorities are looking for “a possible suspect” or “possible suspects” responsible for the accident.
At the moment, there is a large police force deployed in the area used on this day by thousands of people to celebrate LGBTI Pride Day, which was suspended early.
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The vehicle used in the accident, a white van, was found by the authorities, empty, after it was stopped in front of a tree in the Tiergarten, a large park in the center of Berlin that this Saturday was the scene of the end of the LGBTI Pride Day festival, an event that annually brings together hundreds of thousands of people.
After the suspension of the event, the party participants were evacuated following the orders of the organization.
After the accident, the police emptied the park to carry out their investigation work, turning it into a large crime scene.
The mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, condemned the event as “horrible”, which marked a day that had been celebrated in a festive, peaceful and very well organized atmosphere, although he acknowledged that the authorities must still analyze how a car could enter the area where the party participants were.
The vehicle used in the accident, a white van, was found by the authorities, empty, after it stopped in front of a tree in the Tiergarten. Photo: EFE/EPA/CLEMENS BILAN
/ CLEMENS BILAN
“We have gone from a peaceful demonstration, full of love and joy, to an event with one dead and many injured,” Wegner lamented.
“Berlin is the city of freedom and diversity and it will continue to position itself that way,” added the mayor of the city-state of Berlin.
For LGBTI Pride Day, the Berlin Police had deployed more than 2,000 police officers to secure the event.
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After the accident, several hundred officers were mobilized, in addition to a hundred health services operatives, including ambulances and firefighters in an area that was cordoned off.
“The Chancellor and the Minister of the Interior think about the victims and their families,” said the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, through the Federal Chancellery in a statement, in which he alluded to Alexander Dobrindt, the country’s head of the Interior.
Both “thank the security forces for their intervention and will commit themselves especially firmly to clarifying and punishing this atrocious act.”
The Executive specified that the chancellor was “informed immediately after the events” and is in close contact with the Minister of the Interior and the security authorities of the city-state that is Berlin.
Participants with a rainbow flag during the annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) LGBTQ+ Pride parade in Berlin, Germany. Photo: EFE/EPA/FADI YOUSEF
/ FADI YOUSEF
For his part, Dobrindt “maintains a constant dialogue with the authorities of the state of Berlin and has offered the support of the federal government.”
Berlin celebrated its LGBTI Pride Day this Saturday with a march in which local authorities expected the participation of hundreds of thousands of people.
“We have the participation of several hundred thousand people, as in previous years,” a spokesperson for the Berlin Police told EFE earlier, on a sunny day with summer temperatures that will reach a maximum of 28 degrees, according to the weather forecast.
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Under the motto ‘Haltung is hot’, which translates as “taking a position is attractive”, for this year’s event, 83 floats and 55 groups on foot were expected to parade.
In Berlin, the LGBTI Pride Day march is known under the acronym CSD, which comes from ‘Christopher Street Day’.
These acronyms allude to the name of Christopher Street in the New York neighborhood of Greenwich Village, the scene of protests in the summer of 1969, after a police raid, considered one of the milestones of the gay rights movement.
