Last October the Islamic State issued this call to Muslims in the West: “If you are not able to find an IED [improvised explosive device] or a bullet … smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him. If you are unable to do so, then burn his home, car or business. Or destroy his crops.”
But as usual, police are not investigating this as terrorism-related, and instead are assuming the Muslim perpetrator was mentally ill.
Austria, and Europe in general, are in for a great deal more mental illness.
“At least three killed in Austria after man drives into crowd before ‘stabbing passers-by’ in Graz,” by Lizzie Dearden, Independent, June 20, 2015:
A seven-year-old boy is reportedly among the three people killed in Austria by a man who ploughed his car into crowds in the country’s second-largest city and then reportedly started stabbing people.
A witness told the Wiener Zeitung newspaper that dead bodies were left lying face down in the street after the vehicle sped through streets near the the historical Herrengasse in Graz.
The driver, identified by police as a 26-year-old Austrian man of Bosnian heritage, has been arrested. He works as a professional driver and is married with two children.
Witnesses recounted how the man drove his vehicle into the crowd apparently at random, sending people crashing into the windscreen and rolling over the bonnet.
Dr Sea Rotmann, who was nearby, told Sky News: “I had a friend who was there and she saw people flying through the air. She saw bodies lying there, it was absolute chaos and mayhem.
“Apparently the guy was attacking two elderly people with a knife and then attacking police with a knife when he got out.”
The incident happened at around noon local time (11.00am BST), sending screaming shoppers running into shops for safety.
A statement from the city council said: “At 12pm there was an appalling incident in the centre of Graz, which has caused major alarm and left the city deeply shaken.
“A killer used his car as a weapon and deliberately ran people down on a rampage. The perpetrator is in custody.”
A spokesperson said the killing spree started in Zweiglgasse, where one person died, and the driver continued through the city and over the Schönaugasse bridge to the Jakominiplatz square on Herrengasse, ploughing into a cafe seating area.
A witness speaking to the Wiener Zeitung compared the sound of chairs and tables being knocked over by the speeding car to a “gunfight”.
The mayor of Graz, Siegfried Nagl, was riding his Vespa only metres away from the car as it screamed down Zweiglgasse and said he heard a “loud bang” behind him. Paramedics treat a person at the scene where an SUV drove into pedestrians in the city center of Graz, Austria Paramedics treat a person at the scene where an SUV drove into pedestrians in the city center of Graz, Austria
He described seeing the vehicle overtake a bus at “extremely high speed” and hit a man, who died at the scene.
Mr Nagl said: “At first I thought it was an accident and the driver would stop, but he carried on purposefully and had deliberately killed the man.”
The suspect was caught in a nearby street. Police are not currently investigating terrorism as a motive and the man is believed to be suffering from mental illness.
Of course. What else could it be?
Josef Klamminger, the director of police, said the driver’s motive was not yet known but he appeared to be “psychotic” following problems at home….
And so the omnipresent denial continues.