A 25-year-old South Sudanese migrant killed an 18-year-old woman in a fatal subway attack in Hamburg on Thursday evening, after seizing her and pulling her with him into the track bed in front of an incoming train. Both the victim and the perpetrator died at the scene. German police are investigating the case as a suspected homicide.
The incident occurred around 10 p.m. at Wandsbek Markt subway station. According to police, the victim and the perpetrator were independently present on the platform and did not appear to know each other. Investigators said the man suddenly approached the woman, seized her, and pulled her with him into the track bed as a train was entering the station. The motive remains unclear.
The German Red Cross provided psychological support to witnesses, while subway traffic on line U1 was suspended overnight and only resumed the following morning.
Authorities later confirmed that the perpetrator was a 25-year-old man from South Sudan who had entered Germany in mid-2024 through a humanitarian reception program run by Germany’s federal states. He reportedly held a valid residence permit and had been living in municipal accommodation in Hamburg. The victim was an 18-year-old woman from the Norderstedt area in Schleswig-Holstein. Her nationality has not been publicly disclosed.
According to witness accounts reported in German media, the man appeared intoxicated and was seen behaving erratically shortly before the attack. One witness, who said he did not observe the entire incident himself, alleged that the perpetrator grabbed the woman from the side and told her, “I’ll take you with me,” before both fell onto the tracks.
The incident prompted immediate reactions from political figures, calling for a full clarification of the circumstances. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), wrote on X:
Terrible act in Hamburg: A South Sudanese man drags an 18-year-old woman in front of an incoming subway train with him. Both die. The circumstances of this crime must be fully and completely clarified. We must not get used to these ‘isolated cases’.
The killing comes amid renewed scrutiny following earlier railway deaths involving migrants. Only months earlier, a similar tragedy occurred in Lower Saxony, where a 16-year-old Ukrainian girl was pushed in front of a train in Friedland. An Iraqi asylum seeker was later linked to the case through DNA evidence. His asylum application had previously been rejected, and he was legally obliged to leave Germany at the time of the incident. Due to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, the suspect was placed in a psychiatric institution instead of pre-trial detention.
