Hamburg police shot and wounded a man who he threatened fans and agents with an ax in front of the Volksparkstadion. The event occurred shortly before match between Poland-Holland which opened the first day of group D of the 2024 European Championships. According to media reports, the accident occurred near an area reserved for fans of the Dutch football team. The police first used pepper spray against the attacker, then a firearm.
Who is the attacker
The attacker, hospitalized, is receiving medical treatment, but his life is not in danger. According to law enforcement, he is a 39 year old German from Buchholz in the Nordheide in Lower Saxony and is said to be schizophrenic. According to the reconstruction of Bild and of BBC the incident was not linked to the match in question, although it occurred near an area where many fans of the Dutch football team had gathered, a few kilometers away from the stadium. The police specified that the agents used some pepper spray and then shot him when the man tried to light the Molotov cocktail which he wanted to explode among the crowd of fans.
Isolated case
“We start from the assumption that it is a isolated casewhich means it has nothing to do with football,” Hamburg police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen told reporters. Tension was high in Germany ahead of the matches in which the Dutch national team won. That night last in Dortmund were released approximately 50 Italian fans stopped for preventive purposes before Italy-Albania, the opening match of the European Championships. It was not possible to attribute the material found by the German police on the ground (knives, paper bombs and balaclavas) to their responsibility. THE Italy supporters are now free to move around Germany even if they have been advised to return to Italy.
