Matyas K. sits there with his head bowed and doesn’t stop crying while the presiding judge Norbert Riedmann explains the verdict. The 29-year-old defendant should be imprisoned for eight years and one month for attempted murder, among other things, according to the second jury chamber at the Munich Regional Court. She sees it as proven that the craftsman pulled out a knife during a check and wanted to stab a plainclothes police officer.
In mid-November 2022, Matyas K. traveled with his partner from Hungary to Munich to work here. They rented a hotel at Sendlinger Tor, not knowing that their room number 305 had previously been used by a prostitute. So it happened that at night strange figures banged on the door, big guys, drunks. “I was stressed,” K. said in court.
And when the knock came again on the evening of January 11, 2023, K. ran out into the hallway with his knife. There he met the caretaker, mistook him for the troublemaker and pushed him against the wall. “It is questionable whether he held the knife directly to his throat,” explained Riedmann.
At the same time, plainclothes police from the Old Town and Beethoven Guards were also in the hotel to investigate illegal prostitution. When Matyas K. wanted to get a beer around 10:45 p.m., he was checked on the ground floor by a police officer because he thought he was a possible john.
The defendant stabbed the police officer in the direction of his upper body or neck
K. suddenly pulled his open knife out of his jacket pocket and stabbed the police officer in the direction of his upper body or neck. The officer fended off the attack with his bare hands and threw K. to the ground. The police officer suffered two cuts on his finger.
The court considered the murder characteristic of treachery to be fulfilled. The victim was innocent, especially since the police officer only wanted to question Matyas K. as a witness. “But was he also defenseless because of his innocence?” asked Riedmann. Eventually the police officer was able to fend off the attack. But you have to look at the matter from the perpetrator’s perspective: Matyas K. certainly didn’t expect the police officer to be able to defend himself.
Prosecutor Felix Prokop had called for a nine-year prison sentence for attempted murder, while defense attorney Heidi Pioch had called for a conviction for grievous bodily harm. The lawyer wants to appeal the judgment to the Federal Court of Justice. She raised the question of whether a police officer on duty is really innocent and defenseless or whether he doesn’t have to expect anything during a stop. And in the end, the police were not defenseless.