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Husband clinging to wife’s car goes on wild ride after marital spat

Police in Darmstadt had to intervene on Tuesday morning after several people alerted them to a man screaming for help as he clung for dear life onto the hood of a moving car.

Published: 12 July 2017 15:57 CEST

Husband clinging to wife's car goes on wild ride after marital spat

Photo: DPA

The calls came in from shocked eyewitnesses on several streets, police report.

On Wilhelminenstrasse, Karlstrasse, in the Orangerie district and finally on Klappacher Strasse, people alerted police to the fact that a man was holding onto the bonnet of a moving car, calling for help.

Officers were able to intercept the car as it approached the police headquarters. And just as alarmed passersby had reported, a man was hanging onto the bonnet.

Further investigation revealed that the woman behind the wheel was the man's 61-year-old wife.

The couple explained that they had been embroiled in a domestic dispute when the wife decided she had had enough, and got in her vehicle to drive off.

In an attempt to stop her, her 39-year-old husband climbed onto the bonnet. But that didn’t put his wife off. She just put her foot on the gas and sped off.

The woman told police that she had wanted to take her husband directly to the police, because he had been shouting so much.

During the course of questioning, police detected the smell of alcohol on the breath of both husband and wife.

A breathalyzer test confirmed that the couple had been drinking. Charges were then filed against the 61-year-old woman.

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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