Court orders psychiatric care after woman stabs 15 in Hamburg

A German woman is to be permanently placed in psychiatric care following a stabbing rampage at the main train station in Hamburg last year, the Hamburg regional court ruled on Monday.

The court found that the 40-year-old women indiscriminately stabbed travellers with a knife on a platform on May 23, 2025, injuring 15 people, some of them seriously.

While considering the act as attempted murder, the court ruled that the woman could not be held criminally responsible for her actions due to mental illness.

She was found to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia accompanied by a distorted perception of reality and hears voices, according to the ruling.

Due to her illness, she is a danger to the public and is to be permanently committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Three women aged 24, 52 and 85 and a 24-year-old man were critically injured in the attack. One woman had to undergo emergency surgery and was placed in an induced coma.