An investigation has been initiated into the actions of a German police officer who shot a knife-wielding asylum seeker outside a refugee center in Hanover-Vinnhorst on Wednesday.
The 25-year-old asylum seeker had reportedly attacked a security guard outside the facility on Alt-Vinnhorst Street at around 6:50 a.m. He also threatened officers several times upon their arrival at the scene.
Despite numerous warnings to drop his weapon, the assailant refused to do so, prompting a 24-year-old police officer to discharge his firearm. He fired several shots from his service weapon, which neutralized the unnamed asylum seeker.
“Officials immediately provided first aid and called for rescue workers, who transported the critically injured man to a hospital for emergency medical treatment,” a police report read.
The investigation has since been taken over by the Hanover Criminal Service, and it is understood the public prosecutor’s office is seeking to ascertain whether the officer involved using reasonable force against the assailant.
The officer is now under investigation for potential attempted manslaughter.
Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, no further comment has been made by police about the facts of the case at this time.
Knife attacks among migrants have become an ever-increasing problem across Germany in recent years. In January, a Palestinian asylum seeker was arrested for stabbing two passengers to death on a regional train in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
In December last year, German media reported on the horrific stabbing of two school children by an Eritrean asylum seeker as they walked to their school bus stop in the German town of Illerkirchberg.
And earlier this month, a Berlin-born suspected second-generation immigrant stabbed two young girls inside Berlin’s Protestant School as 30 children watched on in horror.