Desperate Harry Potter Fan Runs Amok
October 10, 2005
The stress of standing in line to buy the German edition of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" proved too much for a man in Germany, who ran amok and threatened to kill people unless he got a book, police said last Tuesday.
The unnamed 24-year-old man stormed into a book shop in the Hanover railway station and absconded with six copies of the German-language edition, which went on sale nationwide last Saturday.
Finding it hard to carry the books while running, he dashed into another shop on the railway concourse and pushed shoppers aside to demand a shopping bag from a sales clerk. He punched a customer in the face when admonished for being rude.
With police in hot pursuit, the Potter fan raced across a crowded train platform, threatening to kill anyone who got in his way. Officers finally tackled the man, who was unarmed aside from the six 900-page books.
"The suspect said he could not stand the suspense of not knowing who the half-blood prince was," a Hanover police spokesman said. "He was informed however that he will likely have plenty of time for reading long books in his jail cell."
J.K. Rowling's sixth instalment in the Harry Potter series has already broken all publishing records in Germany since its launch on Saturday, with more than a million copies sold nationwide.