justice
After the death of a 14-year-old: charges against peers
Tulips lie on a fir tree sanctuary in Wunstorf-Blumenau, where the body of a 14-year-old boy was found. photo
© Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
The horror is great: A teenager is said to have killed a 14-year-old boy. The public prosecutor’s office in Hanover has now filed charges against the 14-year-old. When will he appear in court?
After the violent death of a 14-year-old from Wunstorf in Lower Saxony, the public prosecutor’s office brought charges of insidious murder – against a 14-year-old who was also 14. The youth has also been charged with twelve counts of attempted extortion, said Can Türkay, spokesman for the Hanover public prosecutor’s office, on Tuesday. He is said to have dropped ransom notes in the neighborhood threatening to “harm” the neighbors or their children if they didn’t deposit money for him. The 14-year-old was said to remain silent about the allegations.
The body of a 14-year-old was found in Wunstorf near Hanover at the end of January. An arrest warrant for murder was issued against the 14-year-old German suspect. The dead man’s father had reported his son missing because he had not returned home from meeting his peers. The two 14-year-olds met to play. Then the victim is said to have been tied up and beaten to death with stones, the prosecutor said.
No background or subject details
Family and friends said goodbye to the dead boy at a moving funeral service in early February. “We are all still shocked,” said the Catholic pastor Andreas Körner, who knew the victim himself since the communion course, in his sermon at the beginning of February. Since the day the 14-year-old was killed, “nothing has been the same” in Wunstorf. Around 450 people attended the service.
The violent death of the student caused shock nationwide. Hundreds of emergency services had searched for the initially missing 14-year-old at the end of January. They finally found his body on the site of a former nursery.
An autopsy determined the cause of death to be blunt force, according to prosecutors. The victim was unsuspecting and defenseless, the investigators had said. The boy did not expect that he could be killed by his playmate. Details of the background and the motif should not be given, as Türkay emphasized. A spokesman for the district court in Hanover said it was still unclear when the trial at a youth chamber would begin.