After the explosion of an ATM in Gmunden on the night of Friday, three of the total four suspects were arrested in the municipality of Marktl in Bavaria. A spectacular car chase involving Austrian and Bavarian police ended, according to police, on Sunday at 1:30 a.m. at a roundabout, where the Dutch nationals, who had fled in a car, were involved in a traffic accident and were partially seriously injured.

“Three men have been captured,” stated a spokesperson for the Upper Austria State Police Directorate upon APA request. The suspects, aged 35 and 36, had rented the getaway car. During the chase, which began at 11:30 p.m. in Linz and led via the A7 and A1 highways towards Salzburg and into Bavaria, the fleeing driver at times accelerated up to 260 km/h.

Risky Car Chase

Due to investigations, it was known that the vehicle in Linz was the getaway car, explained the police spokesperson. German police were also involved in the alert search. The officers’ pursuit was risky due to the high speed of the suspects, and other road users were also endangered.

The getaway car left the A1 highway in Seewalchen near Lake Attersee (Upper Austria) and then drove across the Innviertel region over the border into Bavaria. At times, the officers lost sight of the vehicle. At a roundabout in Marktl am Inn, the car veered off the road. One of the occupants was reportedly critically injured in the accident. The injured were taken to a hospital. As of Sunday morning, there was still no trace of the fourth suspect.

Suspects Fled Without Loot

The ATM was blown up at around 2:45 a.m. on Friday in a bank branch in a shopping center in Gmunden. Since not only the bank foyer but also the perpetrators’ vehicle—carrying Dutch license plates—was severely damaged, the perpetrators of Moroccan descent initially fled on foot without loot.

A few hundred meters away, a graduation party was taking place. There, the four masked men, armed with a knife, first attempted to rob a car from three young women. When that failed, they threatened a graduate with the knife and forced him to hand over his car keys.

They then fled with the young man’s car, a gray VW Tiguan. The vehicle originally had Gmunden plates, but the suspects allegedly replaced them with yellow Dutch plates. At 10:00 p.m. on Friday, the stolen VW Tiguan was found fully ablaze in a forest area in Aichkirchen near Lambach. The perpetrators likely set the vehicle on fire to destroy any evidence.