Special forces end Berlin supermarket hostage crisis without shots fired
The tense standoff in a Berlin supermarket ended shortly after 9:20 a.m. on Saturday when special forces stormed the Rewe store in Marienfelde, freeing an 11-hour hostage without firing a shot. Police spokesman Florian Nath confirmed that tactical officers from the SEK unit overwhelmed the suspect using a conducted-energy device known as a Taser, which temporarily incapacitates a person through electrical impulses. The suspect was lightly injured in the operation and taken to a nearby hospital, while the hostage—a female employee—was also rushed to medical care in a state of shock. “Fortunately, no one has come to greater harm,” Nath told reporters. “There are no serious injuries according to the current status.”
The drama began at 22:05 on Friday evening when the suspect, whose identity and motives remain undisclosed, drew a large knife inside the Hildburghauser Straße branch at the corner of Tirschenreuther Ring and confronted a cashier. A 22-year-old part-time employee, who asked not to be named, described the scene to journalists outside the cordon: “The knife was already very big. Everything happened so fast—you couldn’t see much.” The employee and a colleague managed to flee and alerted police before the store was sealed off.
Throughout the night, negotiators maintained contact with the suspect, who issued a series of shifting demands described by Nath as “impulse-driven and difficult to follow.” Police stressed that residents in the quiet southern district, home to single-family houses and several schools, were never in danger. By early Saturday, officers used a ladder to peer into the darkened store before the final intervention.
Neighbours and shop workers gathered behind police tape as dawn broke, wrapped in thin foil blankets provided by paramedics. One employee, visibly shaken, told reporters: “She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Police have neither confirmed nor denied the worker’s account, citing the ongoing investigation.
Authorities have released no details about the suspect’s age, nationality or possible motives, and no arrests beyond the scene have been announced. The supermarket remained cordoned off hours after the operation, with SEK vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks still parked along the residential street. Investigators are expected to review surveillance footage and interview witnesses as they piece together the sequence of events that led to Europe’s latest supermarket hostage crisis.
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