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Vienna-Floridsdorf: Woman threatens police officers with knives and ladder!
In Vienna-Floridsdorf, two mentally ill people were arrested by the police after they became conspicuous in subway stations.
Vienna-Floridsdorf: Woman threatens police officers with knives and ladder!
Last night, August 30th, there was a dramatic incident in Vienna-Floridsdorf that caused a stir on social media. A woman was seen in a subway station swinging wildly with a ladder and repeatedly threatening to use knives. Witnesses immediately alerted the police, but they were no longer on site when the officers arrived. But the search was not unsuccessful: the woman with the ladder in her hand was finally tracked down in nearby Julius-Ficker-Straße. Despite repeated requests from the police to stop, she ignored the instructions.
As vienna.at reports, the woman was holding a knife in her shoulder bag. After the police were able to take the ladder away from her, she produced two knives and aggressively approached the officers. The situation escalated and a warning shot was fired into the ground because the woman would not stop threatening to use the knives. Only when the WEGA (Vienna Alarm Department) was called in and the use of a Taser was threatened was the situation able to be brought under control. The 30-year-old was finally temporarily arrested and showed signs of psychological distress, which is why she was brought before a medical officer.
Psychological emergencies in the city
Mental distress seems to be a recurring problem in Vienna's city center at the moment. There was another incident just recently when a mentally ill man was discovered on the U3 tracks around 12:30 a.m. He was sitting a few meters in the tunnel, not directly in the station area. Here, too, passengers had to call the police, which meant that an arriving subway train had to stop in the station for around 20 minutes. There were longer waiting times for passengers and several trains were delayed. According to a spokesman for Wiener Linien, Daniel Amann, in such cases it is advisable to immediately use a safety device such as a train emergency stop in order to quickly defuse the situation.
These incidents shed light on pressing mental health issues in the city. In recent years, the RKI (Robert Koch Institute) has examined the mental health of the population in Germany and beyond. As part of the national Mental Health Surveillance (MHS), core mental health indicators are systematically recorded and continuously reported. These surveys are particularly important to better understand trends in mental health during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and to develop preventive measures RKI informs.
In light of these current incidents, it is crucial that society and city authorities increase their support for people with mental illnesses. In order to avoid these dangerous situations in the future, Vienna has the potential to increase the quality of life for all citizens through targeted offers of help and information campaigns.