Two schoolgirls from Duisburg run over

The beach is not even a hundred metres away. But on Thursday there was no holiday atmosphere in front of the Hotel Sirio in Lido di Camaiore. Instead of shock, despair, helplessness. The previous evening a female driver had run over seven people here and killed two of them. Driving at high speed she had obviously ignored a red light. The dead are two young women from Germany. The students were 18 and 19 years old and attended the Duisburg-Mitte comprehensive school. They met on a school trip to Tuscany. “What remains are scenes of devastation, the sobbing tears of the injured and witnesses, the mangled bodies of two girls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” wrote the daily newspaper La Republic.

On Thursday, Italian online media published a photo of the suspected perpetrator. Katia P. is 44 years old and comes from Brazil. The picture appears to have been taken immediately after the accident. P. can be seen wearing black clothing, a turtleneck sweater and a crocodile leather handbag, and holding her smartphone in her left hand. An alcohol and drug test on Wednesday evening was negative. It is still completely unclear why she raced through the narrow streets of the coastal town 30 kilometers north of Pisa.

Two schoolgirls from Duisburg run over: The driver involved in the accident was arrested

The police had searched the crime scene for skid marks that evening, but had not found any. “She came racing towards us like a projectile,” the The Sera Corriere an eyewitness. “Luckily I was able to jump away, then I saw people falling to the ground, there were pieces of metal lying around everywhere.” Another eyewitness told the local newspaper The National about the bang upon impact: “It sounded like an assassination.”

According to Italian media reports, investigators believe the speed was around 80 kilometers per hour. The police are now looking for surveillance camera footage. The woman is being investigated for two counts of homicide in road traffic. She faces up to 18 years in prison.

“She seemed completely absent,” said an eyewitness

P., the mother of three children, was arrested and is under house arrest. She was taken to hospital for minor injuries. “I don't remember anything,” she is said to have said. When the accident happened, she had a passenger. An eyewitness described P. after the accident as follows: “They seemed completely absent, their eyes sank into a emptiness that is difficult to explain.”

After the first red light, P. is said to have driven through a second red light and hit five more people, including a schoolmate of the two fatalities. All of them were injured, one 60-year-old seriously. Only then did her vehicle, a Mercedes, crash into parked cars and come to a stop.

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A similar case caused horror last year. At that time, a 33-year-old woman from Bavaria ran over a family walking on the sidewalk in northern Italy. Three people, including a two-year-old, died. In September, the public prosecutor's office demanded four years and eight months in prison for the woman, who is being treated for a personality disorder in a clinic near Verona but is said to be of sound mind.

After the accident in Tuscany, teachers and students at the comprehensive school are now receiving psychological support. NRW Education Minister Dorothee Feller promised: “We will do everything we can to provide the school with the best possible support during this time.” Teachers stood outside the school building on Thursday morning and talked to each other, students came to the gate with flowers. (with dpa)