Tuesday, July 19, 2016

The Train Attack

What can be said is that somewhere between Ochsenfurt und Würzburg, a regional train got stopped in the middle of nowhere.....around 11PM last night, in Bavaria.

Cops were called.  Some nutcase Afghan kid....17 years old....had an axe and was hacking on German passengers.  An ax and knife were used.  Cops say now.....fifteen injured, no one dead (yet).  Cops stormed the train.  Kid was apparently was told to halt.....failed to do so....and was shot dead.  Journalists say it in such a way that the cop fired just one round, which generally goes at the heart at what I've said in the past.....German cops get plenty of practice at shooting.

Three of the folks injured.....were hurt pretty bad....requiring an ambulance trip.  The rest can be put into the much lesser type of injuries.

The emergency brake was pulled by a passenger, thus alerting the engineer of a "problem".

The Afghan kid?  He had come to Germany unaccompanied as a teen, and by German law required to be under parental supervision.  The government says he had been placed with a foster family in Bavaria......no one says for how long.

Oddly enough, Bavarian political folks were up at midnight, getting briefed, and a public press conference or statement was read at roughly 1AM.

I should note that around 11:45 last night, I was up and watching German public-run TV.....a decent movie, and they simply ran two lines of text to alert folks of some attack in Bavaria.  More to come at midnight when the movie ended.  They gave a ten-minute summary, and that was it.  Nothing else.

Most Germans, I would guess.....will ask questions, and it'll be  just another hint of trouble in the big "D".  Some state organization will cough up the money for a coffin, and some Muslim group will conduct a proper burial for the kid.  Radicalized?  Maybe.  Or maybe just a nutcase who got hyped up on some fraudulent religious stuff.

The thing is....from my prospective.....there are millions of Germans who ride the rails everyday, and count on the maintenance business to work, and that people behave well enough.....to safely get to work or home.  Today, they have to question their safety.

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