A fugitive 22-year-old believed to have stabbed another man to death at a Frankfurt centre for Jehovah’s Witnesses over the weekend has been killed by a train, police said on Monday.

The man was found Sunday near the Eddersheim train station, where he had been run over by a high-speed ICE train, one day after he allegedly attacked a 45-year-old church member in Frankfurt’s Heddernheim district, police said.

 

Officers found the man’s identification papers near the scene of the accident, and are now trying to determine whether his death was an accident or a suicide.

On Saturday the two men reportedly got into an argument at a congregation lunch buffet. The conflict escalated and the younger man grabbed a kitchen knife from a counter top, stabbing the other man, who died at the scene. 

The stabber fled the church and police failed to locate him until his body was found the next day around 3 pm, they said. 

“Though a positive identification can only be insured after a DNA comparison, investigators assume that the deceased is the wanted 22-year-old,” a police statement said.

According to a police spokesperson, the stabber was not yet part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, though plans existed for his membership.

In April 2010 an 83-year-old man was sentenced to 11 years in prison for attempted murder after storming a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation with a machine gun, knife and samurai sword in the city of Bielefeld in 2009. 

He was unable to fire the weapon and was eventually overpowered by worshippers before he could inflict any damage, but the court in Halle judged the man guilty of 39 counts of attempted murder – the number of bullets he was carrying – as well as weapons charges.