The mayor of Offenburg has cautioned against anti-migrant sentiment after a doctor was reportedly stabbed to death in his own surgery by an asylum seeker, with his 10-year-old daughter forced to watch.
In what was a seemingly unprovoked attack, a 26-year-old Somali man is reported to have stormed a family doctor’s surgery at 8:45 a.m. without an appointment and stabbed the doctor, named by local media only as Joachim T., who died in one of the practice rooms shortly after.
The migrant also attacked and wounded a medical assistant named as Elke D. before fleeing the scene, where a knife was found by police.
A manhunt involving 20 law enforcement vehicles, a helicopter, and a dog squad was launched shortly afterwards, and officers located and arrested the suspect about one and a half kilometres from the surgery. He was identified as an asylum seeker who arrived in Germany in 2015 and was granted a residence permit to live in Offenberg.
Johanna Skopp, who lives directly above the practice, told German tabloid Bild she heard “pitiful screams” ringing out from a room below before hearing “the doctor’s daughter call out, ‘Dad, Dad!’ several times”.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Stefan Räpple said there should not just be ‘business as usual’ following such a serious attack, blasting the “failed migration policy” of the Angela Merkel-led Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party ‘grand coalition’ government, and accusing them of carrying “direct blame” for the murder.
“The policy of open borders does not help people in Africa, rather it will just result in African conditions manifesting here in Offenburg,” he wrote in a Facebbook post.
While AfD supporters have planned a demonstration outside Offenburg town hall Saturday, mayor Edith Schreiner — a member of Merkel’s party — said she acknowledged it was “understandable” that people would be upset by the murder, but urged residents “to behave in a calm manner and to refrain from generalisations”.
Despite having a population of just 60,000 people the Baden-Württemberg town, which lies directly across the Rhine from the French city of Strasbourg, has become something of a “crime hotspot”, public broadcaster DW admits in its report on the killing.
Breitbart London reported last year on an attack carried out on a train by a 27-year-old Gambian asylum seeker who boarded at Offenburg without a ticket and became aggressive when staff asked confronted him.
A 38-year-old a passenger who asked him to “calm down” was attacked with a kitchen knife and a broken glass bottle and wounded in multiple places including his hands, thighs, and shoulders.
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