A 53-year-old man shot two employees at a Mercedes plant in Sindelfingen, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Police arrested the attacker a short time later.Both victims are men and 44 years old. Officials rule out the possibility of a rampage. According to police, the crime took place in Factory 56, where the S-Class is produced.
The authorities have not yet commented on the motive. However, a screenshot of a message by Turkish political blogger Tuğrul Selmanoğlu, who has more than 400,000 followers, is currently circulating on social networks. According to him, the trigger was a dispute about the election campaign in Turkey.
“At the Mercedes factory in Sindelfingen, two of our colleagues were shot at by a dissident on the grounds that they were defending Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Selmanoğlu wrote on Twitter. “One of our brothers died and the other was seriously wounded. The identity of the shooter and those shot has been clarified.” He has since deleted the tweet.
However, there are further indications of a corresponding motivation. A voice message sent among Mercedes employees in Sindelfingen and obtained by the newspaper JUNGE FREIHEIT suggests the same motive. “It was an employee from the early shift. There were two team leaders pro Erdoğan and then there was this guy, this 50-year-old (editor’s note: meaning the 53-year-old attacker) who was anti-Erdoğan.” A discussion had turned into an argument. The situation escalated, whereupon the attacker drew a weapon. He shot one of the victims “directly in the face” and the other in the upper body. In total, eight shots were fired. Another employee of the plant also confirmed the account to the newspaper Junge Freiheit.
An inquiry of the JUNGE FREIHEIT about the current state of the investigation remained unanswered by the police.
https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2023/schuesse-bei-mercedes/