Man stabbed at St Gallen restaurant

A 22-year-old man was fighting for his life in hospital after being stabbed in the garden of a restaurant in St Gallen at around 6pm on Friday.

Published: 7 August 2017 08:42 CEST

File photo: Bas Leenders

According to witnesses, a 42-year-old man suddenly set upon the victim with a knife, stabbing him in the neck, St Gallen police said in a statement on Saturday morning.

Passers-by managed to knock the knife from the attacker’s hands and restrain him until the police arrived.

The accused was arrested and later interviewed by police who found him to be “confused”. Medical examinations will form part of the investigation, said police.

The accused was not known to the police for violent offences.

It is unclear whether the two men, both Swiss citizens, knew each other. No motive has yet been established.

The victim was operated on in hospital on Friday evening but remains in a critical condition.

Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.