After the killing spree at the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg, an official is being investigated – among other things because of negligent homicide.
The Hamburg public prosecutor’s office is investigating an employee of the Hamburg weapons authority after the killing spree at Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is a suspicion of negligent homicide in six cases and negligent bodily harm in the office in 14 cases due to failure to check the perpetrator’s gun ownership.
As a result, the responsible department head is said to have only ordered a check at Philipp F. “instead of obtaining further information and then (…) immediately securing the firearm and ammunition,” as the public prosecutor writes. Three members of the examination board are also being investigated for false certification in office.
District court executes ten search warrants
The district court of Hamburg executed ten search warrants on Thursday. According to a statement by the Hamburg public prosecutor, the searches concerned the residential addresses of the four suspects, the workplace of the weapon authority employee and rooms of the Hanseatic Gun Club.
There are “sufficient factual indications” against the employee of the weapons authority for the suspicion of negligent homicide in six cases and negligent bodily harm in the office in 14 cases, it is said. He is said to have neither documented information about Philipp F., which he had received from an employee of the Hanseatic Gun Club from F.’s family environment, nor forwarded it properly within the weapons authority.
Department head orders only storage control
“In particular, he did not point out that he had proposed an ‘anonymous’ letter that the weapons authority received on January 24, 2023 and had initially processed there as a form of notification and that he knew about possible authors and other backgrounds to the letter,” he said the prosecutor’s office.
In this ignorance, the responsible department head of the weapons authority only ordered an unannounced storage check for Philipp F.’s firearm instead of securing the weapon and ammunition.
Three members of the examination board are being investigated in the office because of the initial suspicion of false certification. The examination board had issued Philipp F. a “blank” certificate of expertise dated April 28, 2022. But in fact, F. is said not to have passed the practical examination on April 28, 2022.
A regular re-registration for the examination and the examination itself did not take place. Instead, on October 24, 2022, a member of the examination commission is said to have carried out a “re-examination” in the Hanseatic Gun Club that was allegedly successful, which was then documented with the certificate of expertise dated April 28, 2022 to the weapons authority.
Based on this, Philipp F. would presumably not have received a gun ownership card in December 2022 and was therefore not allowed to own a gun or ammunition. The accused are accused of having issued incorrect certificates of expertise not only for Philipp F., but in several cases and thus concealing the implementation of an irregular inspection from the weapons authority.