The Hamburg police shooting – a sad and sobering story that briefly raised fears for the worst at Euro 2024

Home to Zum Silbersack, a legendary tavern with a famous jukebox, and not much else, Silberbackstrasse is generally one of the quieter streets in Hamburg's infamous St Pauli district.

But for a few frightening moments on Sunday, it threatened to become the site of the country's worst nightmare.

At 12:30 p.m., a man dressed in black came out of Do Mundo kebab shop, on the corner of Silberstrasse and the much better known Reeperbahn, and began shouting at a large group of German police officers. They were there to keep an eye on the tens of thousands of orange-clad Dutch fans parading around St Pauli before being ushered onto Hamburg's U-Bahn for a 10-minute ride to the Volkparkstadion, venue of the Euro 2024 group. Match D between Poland and the Netherlands.

Men shouting in the street are common in these parts, but men shouting in the street while holding a small ax and a bottle with an oily rag hanging from the top are not.

Initially, the police are on one side of a metal barricade, which has been placed at the top of the street to keep the Dutch tide in one direction, and the man in black is on the other. He then half-heartedly attempts to cross the barriers, while continuing to shout “dirty fascists” to the crowd of police, which grows larger by the second.

Deeply agitated, he turns away from the police and begins running down the street, away from the Reeperbahn. He is pursued by at least half a dozen police officers, one of whom fires a stream of pepper spray in his direction.

With the police flanking him across the street, he is effectively stuck in the middle of the road. He's already dropped his axe, which turns out to be a roofing ax or shingle hammer, and is trying to light what looks a lot like a Molotov cocktail.

An armed plainclothes police officer fires two warning shots into the air. Now the man is surrounded by at least a half-dozen officers pointing handguns at him.

Then four more shots are heard, the man is on the ground and it's over.

He was hit in the legs. An officer steps forward, disarms him and places him in the recovery position. Within seconds, a dozen more police officers surround him, one of them applying what looks like a tourniquet to his leg.

More police are now cordoning off the area. The Dutch “supporters’ march” was stopped and quickly redirected. The vast majority of them have absolutely no idea what just happened. The first time they hear about it is when they receive messages from home asking if they are okay.

If you're wondering how I know all this, it's because it was filmed by a video journalist who stood in this corner and watched the Dutch go by. Their images, combined with those of another film crew across the street, were published on a German media outlet's X account an hour later.

These images were rebroadcast on all German media for the rest of the day.

The media outlet that first published the video is a relatively new entrant to the market and appears to specialize in reporting on crimes committed by “auslanders,” or foreigners. As the man at the center of this incident was clearly German, online speculation about the motive quickly shifted from a disgruntled migrant to a “left-wing extremist”, the justification being St Pauli's centre-left politics and his use of the word “fascist”.

The first facts emerged at 12:59 p.m. when the Hamburg police published a brief statement on their X feed, saying that a “major police operation” was underway after “a person threatened the police officers with a pickaxe and an incendiary device.” He adds that they had used their firearms and that “the attacker was injured and is currently receiving medical treatment”.

Bild, the popular German tabloid, was the first to launch an article online with a headline referring to an ax-wielding maniac going on a rampage.

For a country on high alert, with the memory of what can happen when you invite the world to a party that goes horribly wrong, this was exactly what it feared most about Euro 2024 . Gunshots, fans running for cover, broken windows, sirens, blood on the road.

But then… nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Wout Weghorst scored a late winner to send the Dutch back to St Pauli in high spirits. Hamburg police spokeswoman Sandra Levgun gave a reassuring interview at the crime scene, telling everyone that it was a lone assailant with no links to any terrorist group or apparent motive. And social media attention focused on shaky footage of a brawl outside a bar in Gelsenkirchen, where England later played Serbia.

By the time it was confirmed that the attacker was a 39-year-old man from Buchholz in der Nordheide, 32 kilometers south of Hamburg, the news cycle had reversed. And when it was learned that he suffered from schizophrenia and was known to the authorities, the world changed.

Which briefly brought to mind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, when Palestinian militants kidnapped and killed members of the Israeli team, or the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, when a group of Islamists attempted to enter the stadium where the French were. playing against Germany in a friendly soccer match while two other groups carried out coordinated attacks on innocent people in the city, turned out to be just another sad story about a person who needs help.

Fortunately, this was not another attack like the 1996 Atlanta Olympics or a 2013 Boston Marathon scandal.

I was in Frankfurt, 300 miles away, when the incident happened and only arrived at the scene around 8 p.m. The police cordon had been lifted half an hour earlier and a news-gathering team from German television channel ARD was about to pack up after a long stint in the area.

Do Mundo was doing brisk business, but Zum Silbersack was only half full, which actually meant it was half empty compared to every other establishment within a half-mile radius. Zum Silbersack wasn't showing the England-Serbia match, you see, nor was it broadcasting Dutch techno or letting its customers dance on the tables. This put it at a distinct disadvantage compared to almost every other bar.

No staff at Do Mundo reported seeing what happened – nor did those who work at all the other bars and fast food restaurants nearby. Most of them weren't open at 12:30, they said, but I wasn't sure they would have told me much even if they had seen something. There’s definitely a “what goes on tour, stays on tour” vibe in St Pauli.

A group of Dutch fans offered to recreate the incident if I could persuade the ARD team to turn their cameras back on. And the only police officers who were willing to talk to me were the Dutch officers who were helping their German colleagues that day, but who were not officially allowed to comment, because they are just guests here.

This is probably the right place to conclude: all of us who came to Euro 2024 are guests here and the Germans, who are good hosts, are worried about our safety.

It was actually the second police shooting during the tournament's opening weekend. A 27-year-old Afghan stabbed and killed a compatriot in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt on Friday before attacking three others who were watching the Germany-Scotland match at a private party. Unlike Sunday's attacker, whose injuries were not life-threatening, Friday's attacker was shot dead.

So it was a false alarm. It's a dark story for the person involved – and for those who love them – and a reminder for all of us of the need to better care for people with serious mental health problems. But this is not an international tragedy or another dark day for sport.

And for that we should all be grateful.

(Top photo: Bodo Marks/photo alliance via Getty Images)