A forensic psychiatric report read out in Copenhagen City Court on Thursday concludes that the 76-year-old man who drove into a crowd near Dronning Louises Bro in April 2025 was insane at the time because of dementia.
The report was presented in Københavns Byret on September 17, 2026, and states that the man was insane when the crash occurred. DR reports that the assessment points to frontotemporal dementia as the cause.
According to the report cited by DR, the man received the dementia diagnosis after the accident. The disease is assessed to have already been present to such a degree that he was insane in the legal sense on the day.
The crash happened on April 30, 2025, on Sortedam Dossering by Dronning Louises Bro in central Copenhagen. The car struck cyclists and people sitting outside two cafés. As reported by DR, 17 people were injured, three of them seriously.
Prosecutor now seeks treatment order
Special prosecutor Karina Winther told the court that the report recommends a treatment order rather than a prison sentence. The reason is that the man is considered insane in forensic psychiatric terms.
Per DR, the prosecution is therefore no longer pursuing imprisonment in the case. A treatment order, known in Danish as a behandlingsdom, places the convicted person under psychiatric treatment instead of in prison.
The 76-year-old has admitted that he drove the car that hit several people at the bridge. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge that it happened under particularly aggravating circumstances.
According to DR’s reporting from the courtroom, Winther said there is no doubt the man did not intend to drive into the cyclists and café guests. She stated that the accident should never have happened.
Winther argued that the defendant should have known he could not drive the car in a fully safe manner when he got into it. She told the court that this was her assessment of the case.
DR reports that the man was on his way to visit his wife at the hospital when the accident occurred. The route took him along Sortedam Dossering on Nørrebro.
The case has been running for about a year and a half since the crash. A verdict is expected later on Thursday, according to DR.
