A Deutsche Bahn security employee fell from a moving train during a violent confrontation and was critically injured.
July 18, 2026, 09:57July 18, 2026, 10:05
The dispute occurred on Friday evening during a ticket check on the route from Offenburg to Karlsruhe, as the public prosecutor and police announced.
“There was probably a verbal argument in connection with the ticket inspection, which is why two DB security employees were called in,” it continued. A presumably drunk passenger is said to have insulted the two security guards. Then there was a physical altercation between the 36-year-old passenger and a 26-year-old security guard.
A security guard got into a violent argument. (symbol image)Image: keystone
“During the scuffle, both people involved fell to the ground. For reasons that are still unclear, the door of the moving train opened and the 26-year-old fell from the train near Ettlingen-Bruchhausen,” said the public prosecutor’s office and the police. Neither the railway nor the authorities could initially find out how fast the train was traveling at the time.
Suspect arrested on the train
Alerted emergency services arrested the accused on the train. It was not immediately clear whether he resisted and was possibly injured himself or whether uninvolved eyewitnesses followed the event.
The critically injured railway employee was finally found during a large-scale search in the track area about two kilometers behind where the train would later stop, it was said. Paramedics took him to hospital for further treatment.
The condition of the security employee remains critical on Saturday morning. For reasons of privacy, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office could not say whether the 26-year-old was in a coma or accessible. According to him, the regional train was traveling at around 120 km/h when the life-threatening fall occurred.
The spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said they were investigating at high speed. Further findings should be shared throughout the day. The affected train will no longer be used in rail traffic for the time being due to ongoing investigations.
Attacks on railway staff are increasing
The events of Friday evening bring back memories of the case of a train conductor who was beaten to death by a man without a ticket during a ticket check in Rhineland-Palatinate at the beginning of February after he asked him to get off. Last week, the 26-year-old perpetrator was sentenced to ten years in prison for assault causing death. He hit the conductor in the head with his fists so hard that he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The act caused horror across the country and sparked a debate about safety on trains. For many train attendants, the case had depressing symbolic significance, as the number of attacks on railway employees is increasing. According to the federal government, the federal police recorded around 2,690 attacks on Deutsche Bahn employees in 2025 – around eleven percent more than in the previous year. (hkl/sda/dpa)