Two Syrian men were harassing a group of women on the Neustädter Markt tram stop in Dresden, early Sunday morning (24 August) when John Rudat, a paramedic and model from New York State, intervened, German police said. The 20-year-old was then stabbed, and the perpetrators fled.
The attack left him with a "deep facial wound" that required "immediate and extensive surgery," according to a GoFundMe launched to pay his medical expenses.
Rudat told the German media outlet Nius he intervened after he saw one of the men on the tram strike a woman. Rudat told the man to stop and pushed him, and the man later hit him, he recalled. Rudat said he was trying to de-escalate the situation when another man approached and slashed him across his face. The 20-year-old has since been hailed as a hero for his actions.
Officers briefly arrested one suspect on 24 August, identified as a 21-year-old Syrian, but later released him because prosecutors didn’t have grounds to keep him detained, the Associated Press reports. On 26 August, officers re-arrested the suspect on the grounds that he was involved in the attack, local prosecutors and police said. He is now in pre-trial detention.
Rudat has since described the incident to remind Germany what the European immigration policies has done to the country. German police have not released any identifying details about the suspected attacker, but many believed he entered the country illegally.
In an Instagram video shared from his hospital bed, Rudat – his face still covered in bandages – argued there is an "immigration problem" in Europe as he recounted the attack.
"If you all didn’t think that Europe had an immigration problem, especially Germany, let me drop some knowledge on you," Rudat said in the video.
He went on to claim that police had arrested a suspect but were going to release him "because he's not a citizen of Germany ... he doesn’t even belong in here," suggesting what many suspect as different levels of justice being applied for German citizens and foreign nationals.
He also told the U.K.-based news outlet GB News that hundreds of people have reached out to him in recent days expressing claims that, over the last 10 years, the immigration problem and the violence problem has been really rising to become a legitimate threat to everyday safety.