Stabbing in Bonn Several injured after dispute in the Hofgarten
Bonn · In the early hours of Sunday morning, several people were injured in a violent dispute near the Universität/Markt stop at the Hofgarten.
It was an horrific scene at the subway stop Universität/Mark at 9am on Sunday morning. The stairs were closed off with red-and-white tape. Clothes were lying in a large pool of blood. Several numbered marking signs were put down by the CID. Discarded injections, dressing material for wounds and disposable gloves are to be seen - traces of the emergency treatment given by first-aid responders and two doctors. On the road Am Hofgarten there were shoes and clothes on the ground. Investigators were collecting bottles which were lying around and which might have played a role in the dispute. „A lot of blood has been shed here“, said an experienced policeman.
The emergency call was made in the early hours of Sunday at around 3.44am. About ten people were attacking each other brutally at the subway stop. The police sent several patrol cars. At the scene, the officers found four men who had all suffered stab wounds. A 20-year-old was in a life-threatening condition and was brought to the university hospital after emergency care was administered on the spot. On Sunday afternoon he was in a stable condition according to the police. The three other men (18, 26 and 35 years old) were brought to a hospital with more minor injuries.
Last mass fight only four weeks ago
The police arrested two men - aged 20 and 26 - as well as a 22-year-old woman under suspicion of attempted homicide. A homicide squad under the guidance of Dietmar Kaiser took up the investigation in consultation with public prosecutor Sebastian Weikinger. The public prosecutor will decide on Monday if arrest warrants will be issued.
It is not clear if knives or broken bottles and shards were used in the dispute. The police could also not comment on the cause of the violent fight. „We are checking if there is a connection to the drug scene“, said police spokesperson Robert Scholten. According to GA information, the two arrested men are supposedly Lebanese, the woman German. The injured men are from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
The Hofgarten is a hotspot in Bonn’s drug scene for some time now. Disputes happen repeatedly. Just four weeks ago more than ten people had a violent dispute where a knife and broken bottles were used as weapons.
The police suspect that the opponents - some of them Syrian - knew each other. One of the involved men can be placed in the drug scene by the investigators. A similar background is thought to have been the situation in a case in April: An unknown man fired a few shots from what appeared to have been a blank gun. Nobody was injured. Unlike during a stabbing incident in the summer of 2016, when four men were injured.
The police are tackling the scene in the Hofgarten regularly. In May, the officers arrested six suspected drug dealers between 18 and 35 years of age. All had carried street sale amounts of narcotics with them; 80 units for consumption were stored in near-by bushes and other places of deposit. The suspects were all from the „Arabian region“, according to the police. Also on suspicion of drug dealing three other men were arrested in the Hofgarten in April, by plain clothes officers.
The forensics department worked for several hours at the scene on Sunday. The Stadtwerke could not use the subway stop again until midday. At the large-scale cordoned-off area, the police had to explain to pedestrians and joggers again and again, who wanted to get past.
(Original text: Axel Vogel, Andreas Baumann / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
