Doctor Who star John Barrowman posted videos to twitter after being caught up in a fatal car incident in Berlin which left a teacher dead and nine others seriously injured. The actor, singer and presenter reassured fans that he is okay, but shaken, as he described the scene.
The incident happened near the popular Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard in the west of the German capital when a man drove a car into a German school group standing in a popular Berlin shopping district, authorities said. He then got the car back on the road and then crashed into a shop window a short distance away, police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.
Berlin’s top security official, Iris Spranger, said the woman killed was a teacher on a school trip with students from the central German state of Hesse. Five people sustained life-threatening injuries and another three were seriously injured, fire service spokesman Adrian Wentzel told n-tv television. Police said more than a dozen people had been injured.
Barrowman, 55, a former Dancing on Ice judge who played Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and spin-off show Torchwood said he had been told to sit by a tree in case another vehicle end up being driven towards people.
His voice shaking, he said shortly after the incident: "So my friend Mikey Kay told us to sit by a tree just in case anything else happens because it’s something that’s between us and any other vehicles that might come.
"It’s really pretty bad guys, there’s… over where we are here there’s a lot of police, there’s a dead body in the middle of the road then over here there is all the emergency services that are trying to help victims and people."
Barrowman, who was in a nearby shop with his partner at the time of the incident, added: "If I’m pointing to you from the road, up there, the car came down onto the pavement, we had dinner in that restaurant last night. The car came down onto the pavement and has some onto the road over there, has hit somebody and then has gone down the road and has come back onto the pavement down that way and come back onto the pavement and gone through a bunch of people, gone through the photograph that I posted of a cafe and then right into a storefront window.
"The police presence is unbelievable, they are clearing out the area but it was cordoned off, I heard the bang and the crash when I.. we.. were in a store and we just saw the carnage.
"There are helicopters coming now to airlift people, so I’m gonna let you see this then I’ll get back to you."
The driver was apparently detained by passers-by before being arrested by a police officer who was near the scene, Mr Cablitz said. He added that officers were trying to determine whether he had deliberately driven into pedestrians or whether it was an accident, possibly caused by a medical emergency.
Police later tweeted that the driver was a 29-year-old German-Armenian who lived in Berlin.
Ms Spranger said posters were found in the man’s car “in which he expressed views about Turkey”.
Large numbers of rescue vehicles and first responders were at the scene.
Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey tweeted that she was “deeply shocked by this incident” and said that authorities were keeping an open mind about possible motives.
In a later update to twitter, Barrowman, who is understood to have been on holiday in the German capital, said he had been moved further away from the incident. He said there were helicopters coming in "this is bad, this is serious, really bad." He said there were hundreds of emergency service personnel in the area, blocking off city block after city block."
John later told his followers that he was heading back to his hotel. He said: "We are making our way back to the hotel, I’ve already spoken to my parents…to let them know we’re ok.
"But we’re going back to the hotel because we kind of don’t want to be on the street."
Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey tweeted that she was “deeply shocked by this incident”. German interior ministry spokesman Maximilian Kall said it was “too soon” to say whether it was an accident or an intentional act.
