Man apologises in German court for throwing boy under train

An Eritrean man on Wednesday apologised in a German court for fatally pushing a boy under a train during an episode of paranoid schizophrenia, in a case that stoked a heated immigration debate.

“I am infinitely sorry, especially for the family,” suspect Habte Araya said in a written statement read by his lawyer at the opening of the trial in Frankfurt.

The suspect is accused of pushing the eight-year-old boy and his mother onto the tracks in an apparently random attack at Frankfurt’s main station last July.

The mother was able to roll off the tracks to avoid the oncoming high-speed InterCity Express train, but the boy was killed instantly.

Araya said he could not remember the crime but it “must have happened according to all the information I have received”, adding that he was “very seriously ill” at the time.

The suspect, who had entered Germany from Switzerland days earlier, is also accused of trying to push a 78-year-old woman onto the tracks, although she managed to save herself.

That woman told the court on Wednesday she remembered seeing the boy and his mother “flying through the air” after the suspect pushed them, and that the platform was filled with “sheer horror”.

Following a psychiatric assessment, prosecutors said Araya was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and had “at least a considerably reduced ability” to control his actions.

They say he committed manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily injury and have applied for him to be placed in a secure psychiatric institution.

He could also be found to have committed murder and attempted murder if he is deemed to have acted with malice and “deliberately exploited the victims’ defencelessness”.

Judges said Wednesday they saw “a whole series” of indications that mental illness could have rendered him unable to control his actions.