In February 2022, eight friends meet in a bar in Weiden, they order champagne and toast. A few moments later they collapse. One of the friends, a 52-year-old man, dies. It later turns out that the bottle was laced with extremely high amounts of MDMA – liquid ecstasy. There was no bubbly in it.
There was great concern afterwards, and not just in the Upper Palatinate. And the guesswork: the circumstances were simply too unusual and the case was unique nationwide. Now, in November 2023, the authorities want to have identified a suspect. A 35-year-old man was arrested in the Netherlands and extradited to Germany, the Weiden public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday. He is accused of negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and trafficking in narcotics. An investigating judge has already ordered pre-trial detention. The presumption of innocence still applies.
Apparently customs managed to trace the route taken by the champagne bottle served in Weiden on February 13, 2022 – as well as the routes of other bottles. Shortly after the incident in Upper Palatinate, a similar one occurred in the Netherlands, in which four people were injured. Additional bottles were later discovered in Germany that contained drugs instead of bubbly. The Federal Office of Consumer Protection had previously issued a warning for a specific batch of champagne: If the contents were reddish-brown and smelled of aniseed, then “don’t try anything.” Even tasting it can lead to serious health problems, and a small sip can be fatal.
“Don’t try anything”
According to the current state of the investigation, the prepared bottles were resold several times by several people. But they didn’t know their true content. This is how one of the prepared champagne bottles ended up in that restaurant in the Upper Palatinate. The innkeeper said at the time that he had ordered the bottle online. And that he blames himself. He wasn’t to blame. “This was a tragic coincidence,” authorities soon confirmed. It could have happened to any other restaurant or private individual.
This makes the person arrested all the more suspect, at least from the perspective of the public prosecutor. He is said to have been responsible for storing the bottled drugs in the Netherlands – and was partly responsible for the bottles getting to third parties. The Weiden district court therefore issued a European arrest warrant to search for him. After initially escaping, the man was arrested and transferred to Weiden. According to the public prosecutor’s office, he has not yet commented on the accusation.
Given the circumstances of the Weiden case, the suspicion quickly arose that the prepared bottle was never actually intended for public sale, but rather for drug smuggling. It is entirely possible to open a bottle of bubbly, refill it and close it again inconspicuously. The location of the arrest now seems to give further support to this theory: The Netherlands and its ports are considered a hub for international drug trafficking. However, the authorities did not provide any further information on Thursday. The investigations are ongoing and will continue at full speed, “also with regard to potential accomplices.”