Hospital reported him missing Bernese police have been searching for the perpetrator since midday without success
A presumably mentally unstable man in his 60s probably started the devastating fire in a Postbus in Kerzers FR on Tuesday evening. The police have been searching for him since midday.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- On Tuesday evening, several people died in a Postbus fire in the center of Kerzers FR.
- A mentally unstable man is said to have set himself alight in the bus before the fire spread to the entire vehicle.
- The police had been searching for him since midday after he was reported missing by a hospital.
The suspected perpetrator of the Postbus fire in Kerzers FR was known to the Bern cantonal police in connection with narcotics abuse, as confirmed to RTS on request. He had apparently been staying in a hospital in the canton of Bern. The hospital reported him missing shortly after 1 p.m. on Tuesday.
"An investigation was immediately launched and search measures were taken, but by the afternoon the person had still not been found and there were no concrete indications as to where he was," a spokesperson told RTS. The man in his sixties had also been reported in the national search system Ripol.
The police were also in contact with people close to him or his relatives in order to obtain information about possible danger to himself or others. However, there were no such indications as of yesterday.
According to investigations by the Fribourg police, the man is said to have boarded the bus in Düdingen at around 5.45 pm and set himself on fire in Kerzers at around 6.25 pm. What happened in between is to be reconstructed by analyzing the surveillance cameras.
The police are assuming that the Swiss national from the canton of Bern is among the victims, but cannot yet say with absolute certainty. The identification of the victims is still pending, as the commander of the Fribourg cantonal police, Philippe Allain, told the media in Granges-Paccot on Wednesday.
