Julius Sprays the Taxi Driver with Tear Gas and Flees

Julius’s assault on a taxi driver transforms a routine ride through Neukölln into a violent escape, with Lukas, Gino, and Sanchez drawn into the flight. The episode’s sharp reversal—from Julius offering to pay the fare to attacking the driver—reveals how quickly his bravado becomes real danger, and how the group’s laughter sits beside Lukas’s recognition that someone has been badly hurt.

The Fare Becomes an Ambush

The taxi stops opposite a gas station at the next junction after the group has travelled along Fritz-Erler-Allee. The driver asks for 12.30 euros. Julius tells the others to get out and says he will handle the payment, leaving them waiting beside the car. Lukas peers through the passenger window when Julius takes longer than expected and wonders whether he lacks the money.

Instead, Julius takes something from his pocket, smiles at Lukas through the glass, unbuckles, and turns toward the driver. He sprays CS gas into the driver’s face. The man screams in pain as Julius pulls open the door and jumps out. Before fleeing, Julius slams the door shut and kicks off the taxi’s side mirror. The apparent delay over the fare has concealed an attack, not a failed attempt to pay.

Flight and Uneasy Laughter

Julius shouts a taunt welcoming the driver to Neukölln, then runs. The others sprint after him. He throws the small gas canister away in a parking lot and turns behind the apartment blocks; the group crosses a small lawn, panting, until they reach the entrance to his building. Lukas thinks the driver is unlikely to catch them there, but admits he does not know whether the man followed.

At the entrance, Julius produces his key and boasts that he had said he would take care of things. Gino and Sanchez start laughing, and Lukas joins them despite not wanting to. His thought of the injured driver interrupts the group’s exhilaration: the escape has succeeded, but their laughter does not erase the harm they have just witnessed. Julius then goes inside to check whether his brother has really left. When he returns, he says his brothers are still there and suggests the group find somewhere else to hang out.

A Pattern of Recklessness

The assault belongs to a broader sequence in which Julius treats dangerous tools and bravado as practical solutions. In a later plan to break into their school, he produces a lockpick and claims he can open doors, cars, and basements with it. Sanchez instead throws down a large set of keys, which Julius regards with awe before putting the lockpick away. On the night of the break-in, Julius also reveals that he has brought a blank-firing gun, prompting Lukas to fear that an already serious burglary could become an armed offense.

That later scheme makes the taxi episode more than an isolated burst of violence: in both situations, Julius’s confidence turns a risky plan into a sharper threat. The school break-in yields a much larger target than the fare dispute: the boys find around forty unopened boxes of computers and monitors, and Lukas helps pass them down from the shelves. When they later try to sell the new computers, a shopkeeper confronts them with the recent theft of computers from a school. The contrast between Julius’s confident gestures and the practical exposure of the group’s actions recurs across these episodes.

Narrative Significance

Lukas’s account keeps the assault close to the group’s immediate perceptions: the unexplained wait, Julius’s smile through the window, the driver’s scream, and the sprint to the building entrance. The quick sequence makes the attack feel like a reversal of an ordinary errand, while Lukas’s reluctant laughter registers the pressure of joining the others even as his attention returns to the driver’s pain. Julius’s escape is immediate, but the scene offers no confirmation of the driver’s eventual condition; its consequence within the group is the unsettling coexistence of relief, amusement, and awareness of the harm done.