Out of fear that someone might drive into the crowd, parents in Freilassing, Bavaria, protected a school event using their own cars. They blocked the access roads, acting as a kind of anti-terror barrier. Concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack, parents in Freilassing secured the elementary school’s project day, which took place in the local pedestrian zone, by positioning their vehicles at the entrances. According to Heute, around 600 children were present in the pedestrian area, and the parents blocked the access routes to ensure that no one could drive into the crowd. The school had previously asked them to use their cars as makeshift anti-terror barriers.
“They simply asked us to block the roads, because otherwise this event for our children could not have taken place,” one mother explained to Servus TV. The school had consulted with the city’s public order office and decided on this “pragmatic solution.” In a circular letter, parents were asked to volunteer their support. “From our perspective, it was a good solution. Almost all parents took it very calmly, and the children didn’t even notice,” said school principal Johannes Zeitel to the Passauer Neue Presse. He praised the fact that enough parents volunteered quickly. “If there had been six police cars there, it certainly would have influenced the atmosphere of the event differently.”
Following reports on the event, there was also criticism that parents, rather than the city or the police, had taken responsibility for securing the event. However, the principal rejected this criticism in his comments to the Passauer Neue Presse. He stated that there had never been any talk of “terror” or a concrete threat. The cars, he said, were meant to serve both the “subjective and objective sense of security.”
