15-year-old boy arrested in connection with gruesome knife attack on German soldiers, terror motive under investigation

German police say they have arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with a fatal stabbing at a folk festival on Friday that left three people dead and eight others injured, officials said at a press conference on Saturday.

The boy was arrested after the horrific attack at Fronhof, a market square in Solingen, near Cologne and Düsseldorf in the west of the country.

Police believe he was suspected of knowing about the planned attack and of failing to inform the authorities. However, he is not the attacker and the perpetrator is still at large.

Prosecutor Markus Caspers said the 15-year-old was arrested after two witnesses contacted police. The witnesses said they overheard a conversation between the boy and an unknown person before the attack in which intentions were discussed that were consistent with the events that followed.

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A 15-year-old boy was arrested in connection with a fatal stabbing at a folk festival in Germany on Friday that left three people dead and eight others injured. (Gianni Gattus/dpa via AP, Main, Christoph Reichwein/dpa via AP, bottom left, Henning Kaiser/dpa via AP, bottom left.)

Caspers said police believe the motive was terrorist. There was no other motive and the victims apparently did not know the attacker. Police said there had been no specific terrorist threat before the festival.

The victims were standing in front of a stage enjoying live music from a band celebrating the city's 650th anniversary when the attack occurred at around 9:35 p.m. local time on Friday.

The three dead were two men aged 67 and 56 and a 56-year-old woman, authorities said. Police said the attacker apparently aimed specifically at his victims' throats.

Thorsten Fleiss of the German police, who served as operations manager on Friday evening, said that police throughout the state of North Rhine-Westphalia were carrying out various search and investigation measures that would last throughout the day.

The police cordoned off the square on Saturday and passers-by laid candles and flowers in front of the barriers.

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Police officers stand near the crime scene on Friday. The three dead were two men aged 67 and 56 and a 56-year-old woman, authorities said. Police said the attacker apparently aimed specifically at his victims' throats. (Gianni Gattus/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X last night that the incident was a “terrible event that has shocked me deeply.”

An attacker brutally killed several people … The perpetrator must be caught quickly and punished to the full extent of the law,” Scholz wrote.

In a translated social media post late Friday, the city's mayor, Tim Kurzbach, said the city was in “shock” following the attack.

“This evening we are all in Solingen full of shock, fear and great sadness,” he wrote. “We all wanted to celebrate our city's birthday together, and now we have to mourn the dead and injured. It breaks my heart that there has been an assassination attempt on our city.”

Fatal knife and gun attacks are relatively rare in Germany. The government announced earlier this month that it wanted to tighten regulations on carrying knives in public.

In May, an Afghan migrant carried out a stabbing in Mannheim, injuring an anti-Islam activist and several others, including a police officer who died. Days later, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was stabbed to death in the city while campaigning.

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Emergency services and police are deployed near the scene where three people were killed and injured in an attack at a folk festival in Solingen, western Germany, German news agency dpa reported on Friday, August 23, 2024. (Gianni Gattus/dpa via AP)

The violence came ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, in which the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which campaigns against mass immigration, has a good chance of winning.

Although the motive and identity of the attacker were unknown, Björn Höcke, the AfD's top candidate for one of the state elections, took Friday's attack as an opportunity and posted on X: “Do you really want to get used to it? Free yourselves and put an end to this madness of forced multiculturalism.”

Sarah Rumpf-Whitten of Fox News, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.