Germany international footballer Robert Enke has died at the age of 32 after being killed at a railway crossing near his home on Tuesday.

The chairman of his Bundesliga club Hannover, Martin Kind, confirmed that the goalkeeper had died.

“It is a tragedy. You expect many things, but not something like that,” said Kind, who heard the news while returning from a meeting of the German football association (DFB) on Tuesday.

“I do not know how and why it happened, but I do not think that it had anything to do with football.”

German police told Spiegel Online that they suspected suicide, and other reports said Enke had been hit by an oncoming train near his home.

A press conference has been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon which may shed more light on what happened.

Enke had won eight international caps for his country, and was expected to be in the squad for next year’s World Cup finals in South Africa.

He missed Germany’s last four matches due to a bacterial infection, but had just returned to club action with Hannover.

I do not know how and why it happened, but I do not think that it had anything to do with football

–Hannover president Martin Kind
“We are all shocked,” said Germany’s general manager Oliver Bierhoff. “We are lost for words.”

DFB president Dr Theo Zwanziger said that Enke’s death had left the football community in Germany “deeply distressed and in mourning.”

“All our sympathy goes to the wife of Robert Enke and his family,” he said in a statement on the DFB’s Web site.

Enke’s two-year-old daughter Lara died in 2006 of a rare heart condition, but he and his wife Teresa have an eight-month-old daughter they had adopted.

according to CNN