In the southwestern part of Berlin, a dangerous police operation occurred, resulting in a shootout between special police forces and a man—one of whom was fatally shot.
Special police forces in Berlin-Zehlendorf shot and killed a man during the storming of an apartment. The Berlin police and the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office announced this in a joint statement on Saturday evening. According to the statement, a 46-year-old man in the Nikolassee district had threatened a 49-year-old man with a firearm. The incident occurred around 10:20 a.m. on a caravan site on Potsdamer Chaussee.
The 49-year-old man managed to “drive the attacker away and call the police,” the statement continued. The threatened man was unharmed. The attacker then retreated to an apartment building on Dreilindenstraße.
The police then alerted their special forces, who were able to locate the apartment where the 46-year-old was hiding. The police forces subsequently prepared to intervene.
Man fires at special police forces without warning
Since the man did not open the apartment door, the police forces, with a judicial warrant, gained access to the apartment around 2:45 p.m. In response, the man allegedly immediately opened fire on the police officers. The special forces returned fire, fatally wounding the man.
During the day, the situation on the ground initially remained unclear. Around twenty police officers were reportedly deployed on Dreilindenstraße in southwestern Berlin, as a police spokeswoman told the German Press Agency (dpa) at noon. When asked by t-online, a police spokeswoman confirmed that the special forces had been alerted by the threatened man. He had reported that the suspected attacker had used a “weapon-like object.” It was initially unclear whether this was the weapon the attacker later used to shoot at the police. The homicide squad is now investigating on behalf of the public prosecutor’s office.