SULAIMANI (ESTA) — An Iranian Kurdish asylum seeker faced and confronted a man who stabbed several people in the German city of Würzburg on Friday.
The 24-year-old attacker, a Somali immigrant, grabbed a knife from the kitchen section of a department store, stabbed and killed the saleswoman and two more women in the shop, according to police.
He then injured five other women seriously, as well as wounding a child, in a bank and on the street.
Chia Rabiei, an Iranian Kurd who has been an asylum seeker for only 17 months in Germany, confronted the attacker before passers-by corner him and police shot him in the thigh.
Rabiei, 42, told German newspaper FAZ that he followed the attacker and tried to keep him in check with his backpack and martial arts movement.
Footage shows Rabiei facing the attacker and trying to stop him from running or continuing hurting more people.
The suspect had lived in Wuerzburg since 2015, the year Germany opened its borders to more than a million migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty, according to Reuters.
He was registered as living at a facility for the homeless and had twice this year been put into compulsory psychiatric treatment, once after a fight with fellow residents involving a knife but no injuries, prosecutor Wolfgang Gruendler said.
Five years ago, Wuerzburg, an ancient city of 130,000 people some 100 km (62 miles) south-east of Frankfurt, was the scene of a knife attack on a train by a 17-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker in which five people were injured, two seriously.
Passanten stellen sich einem geistig Verwirrten in #Wuerzburg#amoklauf #würzburg pic.twitter.com/2Imfd98yVR
— Burek Shakur 🇵🇸 (@BurekShakur) June 25, 2021
