Lukasz Urban was so meticulous about the handling of the Swedish-made semitrailer truck he drove for a living that his colleagues called him “The Inspector.” When its owner saw erratic movements on its GPS data, he could pinpoint just when something had gone amiss in Berlin.
A highway veteran with a reputation for reliability, Mr. Urban had arrived Monday morning—a day earlier than scheduled—with his last delivery: 25 tons of square steel tubes he had transported to a Thyssenkrupp AG unit warehouse in an industrial neighborhood in the German capital from Italy. He planned on rushing back home to his wife and 17-year-old son in their Polish village near the German border, said the truck’s owner, Ariel Zurawski.
Instead, the depot’s schedule required the driver to come back the next day. Hours after he left the site, his truck began lurching forward and backward, an indication that the 37-year-old trucker—later found shot, beaten and stabbed inside—was no longer in control of the vehicle that would plow through a Christmas market that night.
“Lukasz was massacred. I barely recognized him” in police photos, said Mr. Zurawski, a cousin who has known him since childhood and who later reviewed the truck’s GPS data. He said he believes Mr. Urban—a powerfully built 6-foot-tall, 260-pound man—would “fight to the end” to save his vehicle.
Mr. Urban’s death has made him a national figure as an attack that seemed distant again claims a Polish life. At least four Polish citizens have died in terrorist attacks this year, including two slain when a carjacker in Nice, France, drove a truck into a crowd of revelers in July. Another 61-year-old woman died in a bombing at the Brussels airport. Some Poles have suggested Mr. Urban receive a posthumous presidential medal.
“I’d like to offer my condolences to the family of the Pole murdered in Germany,” said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party. “We will do everything to make sure such situations don’t happen again.”
The specifics of Mr. Urban’s movements after he was turned away from the warehouse aren’t entirely clear. When he pulled up early Monday, the depot asked him to park elsewhere because there wasn’t enough space, a Thyssenkrupp spokeswoman said, although she couldn’t say where he then headed.
It appears Mr. Urban parked nearby and set out to grab lunch. One of the last pictures taken from his phone showed the trucker at a kebab shop.
By 3:45 p.m., his truck had begun to shudder and start up, and move in jerking motions—as if a beginner had overtaken the wheel, said Mr. Zurawski, who gave the GPS data to police. Police initially said the trucker remained alive for hours to come.
Mr. Zurawski isn’t sure: “If alive, what would he be doing?“ he said. ”They must have killed him, violently on the spot.”
