Heidelberg
14-year-old in court for the murder of a youth
Exterior shot of the Heidelberg justice building. (Archive image) Photo: Uli Deck / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A dead 13-year-old on the floor, next to him a boy with a knife. The act shocked the public in the spring. Little will be learned of the Heidelberg murder trial that is now beginning.
As of today, a 14-year-old will be tried for the alleged murder of a little younger boy. From the point of view of the public prosecutor’s office, there is sufficient suspicion that he killed his victim from behind with several knife stabs.
To protect the juvenile accused, the public is excluded from the entire proceedings in the Heidelberg district court, as a spokeswoman said. As a result, little information is expected from the courtroom. For the act, the law provides for a youth penalty of up to ten years.
The 14-year-old is said to have ambushed the victim on February 24th in a forest in Sinsheim (Baden-Württemberg) when the boy was walking with a girl there. According to the allegations, the attacker spoke to the 13-year-old, lunged at him from behind, brought him to the ground and stabbed him three times in the back with a knife. He also injured his chest and neck, allegedly hitting the main artery. The 13-year-old died shortly afterwards.
The police had arrested the 14-year-old with a kitchen knife in hand next to the bodies of the boy and the girl in the Eschelbach district. He protested his innocence and, according to earlier statements by the investigators, remained silent. According to the findings of the time, there were jealousy disputes about the twelve-year-old girl behind the act.
With the help of experts, the public prosecutor’s office came to the conclusion that the young person was criminally responsible – “that he was therefore mature enough after his moral and intellectual development to see the injustice of his act and to act on this insight”. Therefore, she charged the teenager with murder.
Both boys have dual German-Turkish citizenship. The victim was buried according to Islamic law. Around 900 people came to the town for a funeral march on the weekend after the crime.
The case had caused a stir far beyond Sinsheim and sparked a debate about how to deal with offenders aged 14 and over – especially since the suspect was known to the police: in November he had one at a secondary school in Östringen in the Karlsruhe district Classmate seriously injured with a knife.
After that, the youth welfare office took care of the family. According to the youth welfare office, the 13-year-old at the time was inpatient for three weeks in a child and adolescent psychiatric facility and began anti-aggression training.
The girl with whom the victim was walking in the woods is said to have been involved in the defendant’s plan. The proceedings before the Great Youth Chamber are only about the teenager. Ten follow-up appointments are scheduled, 34 witnesses and three experts are invited. A judgment could therefore follow in early December.