crime
Trier gunman is back in court
Petra Lieser with a photo
© Birgit Reichert/dpa
The deadly shooting spree in Trier three years ago caused horror across the country. Now there is a partial new edition of the process. This opens wounds for the victims.
The new trial surrounding the deadly shooting spree began on Tuesday under high security precautions Trier started a good three years ago. When the now 54-year-old drove to his death in an off-road vehicle through the pedestrian zone, five people died immediately, and there were dozens of injured and traumatized people.
The trial before the Trier regional court is being reopened in parts after the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) largely overturned the first judgment. It is undisputed in the new trial that the defendant was the perpetrator. At the start, Chief Public Prosecutor Eric Samel read out the indictment.
Question about the guilt of the defendant
In the first trial, the defendant remained silent about the allegations. In this process, however, it could “quite be the case that he makes an admission at some point,” said his defense attorney Frank K. Peter to the German Press Agency shortly before the trial began. His client’s goal is to “achieve a fair, correct verdict.”
In the partial new edition of the trial, the focus is on the question of the defendant’s guilt. Because according to the BGH, the Trier judges made mistakes. The man had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Therefore, the court generally considered him to be of reduced culpability. However, the court did not specifically examine and justify the assumption in relation to the crime, as the BGH ruled.
A great burden for the relatives
The defendant raced through the busy shopping street on December 1, 2020 and specifically hit passers-by. For this he was sentenced to life in August 2022 for multiple murders and multiple attempted murders. The court noted the particular gravity of the guilt and ordered the man to be placed in a closed psychiatric hospital.
At the beginning of the trial it was announced that a man who was seriously injured in the shooting spree died on Tuesday night. He has been in need of serious care since the crime.
The new process is a great burden for victims and their survivors. “The nightmare doesn’t stop. You can’t calm down,” said Petra Lieser, whose daughter Katja Lieser was killed in the rampage at the age of 25. “For me it is absolute anger. Not only at the defendant, but also at our jurisdiction,” said Wolfgang Hilsemer, who lost his sister (73) in the rampage and whose brother-in-law later died from the injuries he sustained.