BERLIN >> An 83-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man were killed and 11 others were injured — five severely — when a man drove a car into a lunch-hour crowd in the southwestern German city of Mannheim on Monday, authorities said.

The driver is a 40-year-old German citizen who lived in neighboring Ludwigshafen, police and the public attorney said Monday evening, adding that they did not think the man had a political motive.

Police arrested the man, who was not named publicly, soon after the event and said they thought he was the only person involved.

They said they believed the act was deliberate and Monday night were searching the man’s home as well as his internet history to help understand his motive.

Police said the driver had a criminal record that included assault, a drunken-driving charge and a conviction for hate speech, for a right-wing comment he made on Facebook in 2018. The man, who had worked as a landscaper, had a history of mental illness, authorities said, and he had a weapon on him that fired blanks during the attack.

More than 300 police officers were on the scene immediately after the attack.

Several recent ramming attacks had put Germans on edge before national elections last month.

“Once again, we mourn with the families of the victims of a senseless act of violence and fear for the injured,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a statement.

Two weeks ago, a 24-year-old Afghan man seeking asylum intentionally drove into a union demonstration in Munich, killing a 2-year-old and her mother and wounding several dozen others.

And in December, a Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for more than a decade was accused of driving his car into a Christmas market in the central city of Magdeburg, killing six and injuring hundreds of others.

Those attacks, by immigrants or foreign-born residents, raised questions about domestic security and immigration policy before the elections.