Two dead after shots at the Mercedes-Benz plant

IShots were fired at the Mercedes plant in Sindelfingen on Thursday morning. Two people were killed, as the Ludwigsburg police and the company confirmed in the morning. An initially seriously injured person has now died in hospital, the police said on Twitter. There are no other injuries. The perpetrator was then arrested. The police were on site in large numbers.

According to the company, all those involved were employees of an external service provider. The police and the company said there was no longer any danger for the employees in the plant.

The police had previously confirmed an operation on the factory premises, but immediately emphasized that there was no danger to the population. A spokesman for the Stuttgart public prosecutor said that the 53-year-old arrested man was a lone perpetrator. He did not want to give any further details about the crime, the victims or the suspect.

“We were deeply dismayed and shocked by the tragic news from Sindelfingen this morning,” Mercedes said. The thoughts are with the victims, relatives and colleagues on site.

35,000 employees in Sindelfingen

This is not the first incident of this kind at the Mercedes plant in Sindelfingen. It was not until February 2022 that a driver broke through the barriers at a factory gate, rammed vehicles and drove over bollards. The driver is said to have threatened the police officers who had been called for help with a knife.

According to reports, a police officer fired a shot and injured the perpetrator in the leg. The man was then taken to a psychiatric hospital.

The Mercedes location in Sindelfingen is one of the largest and most traditional plants of the Stuttgart car manufacturer. According to the group, the plant has been in operation since 1915, initially as an aircraft plant, and since 1919 cars have been manufactured in Sindelfingen.

Today the plant has 35,000 employees. Expensive Mercedes models in particular roll off the assembly line in Sindelfingen, including the S-Class and the electric S-Class EQS. Group research is also based in Sindelfingen.