TWO CONNACHT RUGBY players narrowly escaped the axe attack that occurred at Dusseldorf’s main train station earlier tonight and which left five people injured.
Jake Heenan and Dominic Robertson-McCoy had been in Germany to watch Wednesday night’s Champions League game between Borussia Dortmund and Benfica and were preparing to travel back to Ireland via Dusseldorf on Friday.
They planned on spending Thursday night in the city and headed towards the Central Station earlier this evening to do some sight-seeing.
“We left the station to get food”, Heenan told The42.
We can’t have been gone more than an hour and got back to that. The station and everything near it was on lockdown – police and helicopters everywhere. We saw loads of police under a bridge with the road closed off. Then we saw the station and just asked people what had happened. There was a reporter taking photos who let us know. Fortunately, we didn’t get any closer than that. We could just see all the police and people on stretchers inside the station”.
Heenan and Robinson-McCoy returned to their hotel, situated a couple of kilometres away, on foot and saw a litany of emergency service vehicles on their way to the scene.
“On the whole walk him, there were police, fire trucks and ambulances racing through the streets. Locals were a mixture of upset, emotional and confused - a lot of people were wondering what was going on”.
One man was arrested, police said, correcting earlier police reports of two arrests.
