Karl Eder (54), a theologian, managing director of the Catholic Land Committee, sat in the S-Bahn on Tuesday morning, and right next to him the suspect, with passengers on the S8 headed in the direction of Munich.
Eder described him as a dark-skinned “southern type” who had previously attacked another dark-skinned man two compartments away. “I got up and saw how he hit a man. The attacked man bled violently from the mouth and nose.”
Passengers separated the two, and the attacker returned to his seat. Eder spoke English to the attacker because he could hardly speak German: “Do you have problems, you can not hit the man?” In the media the attacker had been described as “German” from Oberbayern, with a police record for dealing in cannabis.
The suspect claimed in broken German that the man he had attacked, had already threatened him at the airport and had a knife.
Eder and other passengers kept the suspect in check. “We have to see that the two remain separate,” Eder said to himself because both men looked as if they were prone to violence.
The police was alerted, and the train stopped at Unterföhring. The theologian said he was sure that the situation was under control. “We had been able to calm the situation,” he said. But the catastrophe would soon unfold.
At the train station, both parties got out and waited for paramedics and police. After what felt like an “eternity” first the medic, and then two “very young policemen” arrived. Eder told the policewoman not to draw her gun: “Leave it [the gun] alone, we have it under control,” he said. That probably almost cost her her life.
The officers left with the dark-skinned man and two witnesses, and then shots rang out.
Norman Nötzold too became a witness to the terrible shooting that shocked the whole city on Tuesday morning. Norman was on his way to the airport to fly to Mallorca. But what happened next in the S-Bahn, he still can not really believe. “No one expects such a thing,” said the 41-year-old from Haidhausen.
“At first I heard a shot, then three or four more,” Nötzold told tz. “At least three bullets hit the S-Bahn, where I sat with my girlfriend,” he continued. Nötzold saw how the perpetrator ran away and spread out on the floor he saw the wounded policewoman, bleeding profusely.
When the shots rang out, many passengers threw themselves on the ground of the S-Bahn. “The people in the suburban train were all very shocked. Many telephoned or cried.”