It’s that one question everyone asks: Why? Why did a 17-year-old – according to the police and public prosecutor’s office, at least – kill his 14-year-old sister in the central Franconian town of Weisendorf (Erlangen-Höchstadt district) last Friday, Epiphany?
The investigators ask themselves this question, they are looking for a motive. And the local people are asking themselves this question too. Karl-Heinz Hertlein (CSU), the mayor of the market with almost 7,000 inhabitants, speaks of “the unfathomability” inherent in what happened: “There is no logic, no rationality and no normal action.” Johannes Saffer, pastor at the Catholic parish of St. Josef in Weisendorf, says faith can give the mourners support. But he also says: “Faith does not give an answer to the question: Why? It stops.”
Also because the accused is silent, according to the public prosecutor. About the course of events, about his motive. He is currently in a detention center. On Saturday, one day after the crime, an arrest warrant was issued for manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm.
Now the investigators are questioning the private environment of the family. What you know so far: On Friday morning, witnesses in Weisendorf heard screams and called the police. When they arrived, they found the dead girl and her seriously injured mother, 41, in the family home. Her life was not in danger. A little later, police officers arrested the girl’s brother nearby. The autopsy on Monday revealed that the 14-year-old was killed with multiple stitches in the head and upper body.
The accused remains silent
Also because the accused says nothing about the allegations, the course of the crime cannot yet be fully reconstructed for the investigators. “The police and public prosecutor’s office will now investigate the area and try to clarify both the course of events and the motive,” says senior public prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke from the public prosecutor’s office in Nuremberg-Fürth.
For the time being, the people in Weisendorf are trying to find their way in their everyday lives despite the horror, say the mayor and pastor. An ecumenical prayer was held in the Catholic Church, and a crisis intervention team was on site at the elementary school where both sister and brother once attended. Both church and school continue to offer the opportunity to talk. So far it has been used moderately. But maybe that’s just because it’s still a long time before the people in Weisendorf understand what happened.
“There is still a state of shock,” says Pastor Saffer, making long pauses between sentences. “You don’t know what to say.”