The suspect in a fatal knife attack in the German city of Wuerzburg last month has been sent to a psychiatric hospital after experts determined that it may not be possible to hold him criminally responsible for his actions, investigators said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
The June 25 attack in and outside a store in the Bavarian city left three women dead and another five people seriously injured.
The suspect, a 24-year-old Somali man, was shot in the leg by police and arrested after people surrounded him and tried to hold him at bay with chairs and sticks.
Authorities have said evidence was mounting that the suspect may have been radicalized, noting he twice shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack and referred to “jihad” after his arrest.
However, Bavaria's state criminal police office and Munich prosecutors said Tuesday that after evaluating his cellphones, they found no propaganda or other extremist material, and nothing that pointed to anyone else having been involved in or known about the attack, according to AP.
Experts on deradicalization and Islam are still evaluating “whether and to what extent religious convictions of the suspect might have played a role” in the attack, the investigators said in a statement.
The suspect was jailed immediately after the attack, but a local court last week ordered him provisionally moved to a psychiatric hospital after an appraisal by experts raised doubt over whether he could be held criminally responsible. He was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday.
Germany has been hit by several terrorist attacks in recent years.
In one attack, a 17-year-old Afghani with an axe attacked passengers on a train in Wurzburg before being shot dead by security forces.
In a second incident, an attacker set off a bomb in a restaurant in Ansbach, killing himself and wounding 12 others.
The worst such attack took place in December of 2016, when Tunisian terrorist Anis Amri killed 12 people and injured dozens more when he drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
In early October, a knife-wielding attacker killed one tourist and seriously injured another in the city of Dresden. Prosecutors later said the incident is being treated as a terrorist attack.