John Barrowman was moved to tears during an appearance on Sky News, as he told of witnessing an incident in Berlin in which a car drove into a crowd of pedestrians.
On Tuesday morning, a man drove a vehicle into a group of people in a popular Berlin shopping district, killing at least one person and injuring more than a dozen, with a police spokesperson claiming many had been left in a serious condition.
The driver was immediately detained and questioned by police, with a spokesperson saying it is not yet clear whether the crash was a deliberate act or an accident, possibly caused by a medical emergency.
Among those who witnessed the incident was the former Torchwood actor, who is currently on holiday in Germany with his husband Scott Gill.
Shortly after the crash, John posted a string of updates on his Twitter page, assuring his followers he was safe and sharing footage of the aftermath.
“It’s really pretty bad, guys,” he said in one video. “Where we are here, there’s a lot of police. There’s a dead body in the middle of the road, and then over here, there are emergency services that are trying to help victims and people.
“A lot of people are walking with limps and injuries… the car came down onto the pavement, then came onto the road over there, hit somebody, then has gone down the road and come back onto the pavement down that way and come back onto the pavement and gone through a bunch of people… and then right into a storefront window.”
In his footage, John referred to the incident as a “terrorist attack”, though it has not been referred to as such by the authorities.
After making it back to his hotel, John and Scott spoke via video-link to Sky News, with the former Dancing On Ice judge becoming tearful at the end of the interview.
“It’s not what we wanted to wake up to, we were having such a lovely time and we were sharing it with all of my fan-family on social media, as we do with all our vacations,” he said.
John then became choked up as he sad “never did I think in my life that I’d be in the middle of a terrorist attack”.
The incident happened at one end of the Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard and next to the Breitscheidplatz square, where an extremist carried out a vehicle attack on a Christmas market in 2016, resulting in 13 deaths.
In a 2019 incident in central Berlin, an SUV ploughed into a group of pedestrians in central Berlin, killing four people. The driver had suffered an epileptic seizure and veered onto the pavement.