The interior minister of the southern German state of Bavaria will review policies for psychiatric homes after two people, including a two-year-old child, were killed in the town of Aschaffenburg.
“It is not easy, under our understanding of freedom, to decide that a person must come to a closed place and be locked up,” said Joachim Herrmann on Thursday.
“But we also have to recognize the obvious danger to our society,” the minister told regional broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.
Herrmann said discussions need to take place with experts to “see if the right standards are being used in terms of risk to the public and risk to other people.”
The attack in the park on Wednesday was carried out by a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who is believed to have a history of mental health problems.
The suspect has been arrested three times for acts of violence, Herrmann said on Wednesday, and was admitted to a mental institution after each incident.
According to the latest information, the 2-year-old boy who was killed in the incident is from Morocco, while the injured girl is from Syria.
The minister said that investigators will need to determine whether the suspect deliberately attacked “migrant children.”