A man who stabbed his wife and then went on a shooting rampage after running over two police officers and snatching one of their rifles has been arrested.
The 41-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, whose identity was not disclosed by media, has been legally residing in Austria since 2011.
He was reportedly well known to the police due to dangerous threats, coercion and bodily harm, and had even served a partial prison sentence for injuring a woman in 2016.
The Iraqi had also been kicked out of the woman’s apartment several times and issued a ban on entry, and had even undergone a six-hour mandatory counselling session on violence prevention last summer.
Josef Landerl of New Start Upper Austria said: “At the time, we didn’t have the evidence and specific cases to conclude that this was a high-risk case.”
The man reportedly appeared at the 42-year-old Romanian woman’s apartment in the city of Linz, Austria, on Monday, 9th January.
Meanwhile, the woman and her daughter were reportedly on their apartment’s doorstep and on their way out when he pushed them back in and began strangling the woman.
Reports claimed that the woman’s daughter then jumped on her stepfather and tried to stop him, after which he stabbed his wife more than three times, injuring her stomach, chest and shoulder.
The woman then grabbed her phone and called the cops, after which he fled away to the workplace of another Romanian national who he believed was his wife’s lover.
Jealous over the Romanian woman’s alleged love affair, he then threatened him with two knives, and ran away shortly after.
He then raced through the city centre in a rented vehicle and seriously injured two cops, aged 21 and 26, after he ran over them at a roadblock.
Holding one of the cops’ assault rifles, he then began walking toward a number of vehicles on a multi-lane road, where he held a Mini Cooper driver at gunpoint before he chased him out of his car.
After failing to start the engine because the driver had removed the keys from the ignition, he then reportedly headed to a nearby VW Arteon and again forced the driver out.
A video of the incident shows the Iraqi man getting into the vehicle and driving away, before he reportedly got involved in another car accident.
Following the crash he approached a white van near the Hotel Kremstalerhof in the Leonding area and fired several shots before he attempted to abduct it.
Hotel receptionist Selina F. said: “We heard three shots, ducked and ran to the back of the office where we hid. We didn’t know if he was coming in for us.”
Just seconds later, the 41-year-old was finally stopped by the police, who immediately arrested him, and interrogated him on Wednesday, 11th January.
He is currently being investigated for attempted murder and aggravated robbery, despite having denied everything when questioned.
