Major operation in Bochum

Man threatened to detonate a bomb in a bank branch

With a bomb threat in a bank, a 40-year-old man kept police and residents in the German city of Bochum on tenterhooks for hours on Tuesday. The area around a savings bank was cordoned off, several stores were evacuated and residents were not allowed into their homes.

Investigators announced in the evening that the man had entered the savings bank in the center of the Wattenscheid district in the afternoon, set down a suitcase and a bag and threatened to detonate a bomb. In the end, the police arrested the man - a Syrian resident of Bochum.

Indications of mental illness
The suspicious objects ultimately turned out to be harmless. "According to the current state of the investigation, there was no danger to bystanders at any time and there were no injuries," it was reported in the evening. Initial indications currently point to a mental illness on the part of the man, who is undergoing voluntary psychotherapeutic treatment.

Robot sent into branch
On social media, the officers had drawn attention to the large-scale operation and appealed to people not to come to the central pedestrian zone in Wattenscheid. The police were on site with a large number of officers. Specialists from the State Office of Criminal Investigation were called in and a robot was also sent into the branch to examine the items more closely.

The stores in the neighborhood of the Sparkasse branch were deserted at times. The district of Wattenscheid lies to the west of Bochum's city center and borders directly on Essen.