Because of the urgent suspicion of a double murder, an investigating judge has issued an arrest warrant against an 18-year-old from the Bayreuth district. He is accused of stabbing a 47-year-old woman and her 51-year-old husband in their house in Mistelbach in Upper Franconia (Bayreuth district) early on Sunday morning. According to the police, the 18-year-old was “authorized” in the couple’s house during the act of violence, so he did not use force to gain access to the property. According to the police so far, the 18-year-old is the friend of the couple’s oldest daughter. That’s why he spent the night in the house. Why it came to “such an outbreak of violence” is the subject of the investigation, said the Upper Franconian Police Headquarters and Bayreuth’s Chief Public Prosecutor Martin Dippold in a joint statement.
About an hour after midnight, witnesses in the 1500-inhabitant town heard calls for help from a neighboring residential building and made an emergency call. A little later, the emergency services found two lifeless bodies in the basement of the property. The affected woman and her husband – both medical professionals according to media reports – had significant stab wounds. That night, the criminal investigation department’s forensics department took over the crime scene work and triggered a large-scale manhunt. A few hours after the fact, the 18-year-old had given himself up in the early hours of Sunday morning and had himself arrested in Bayreuth without resistance. According to the investigating judge’s arrest warrant, he is now in a correctional facility.
In the Upper Franconian community, the outbreak of violence caused great concern, not least because of the circumstances of the crime. According to the police and the public prosecutor’s office, the couple’s four underage children were in different rooms of the house at the time of the crime. Officials of the criminal police, the emergency pastoral care and the youth welfare office are now looking after the bereaved.