justice
Illerkirchberg murder trial: Life imprisonment
Posters designed by children hang on site fences at the edge of a wasteland. This is where the house stood, in front of which the knife attack on two schoolgirls took place. photo
© Stefan Puchner/dpa
Two friends are on their way to school when they are attacked, one girl doesn’t survive. According to the court, the accused wanted revenge on the district office. Now the verdict has been made.
The defendant in the murder trial of Illerkirchberg looks down when the verdict is issued by the Ulm district court: life imprisonment for murder and attempted murder with dangerous bodily harm. In addition, the chamber on Tuesday determined the particular gravity of the guilt. As a rule, early release from prison after 15 years is almost impossible.
A schoolgirl was 14 years and ten months old when the accused attacked her and her 13-year-old friend with a knife in December, according to the court. The teenager succumbed to her injuries in hospital, and her 13-year-old friend was able to flee injured.
Defendant met two counts of murder
As the judge spoke, the defendant looked at the table in front of him, as he had on the previous days of the trial. The chamber justified the determination of the particular severity of the guilt with the fact that the man attacked two victims at the same time and also fulfilled two murder criteria: that of maliciousness and that of enabling a further crime. The judge spoke of a particularly reprehensible way of proceeding.
The man came to Germany from Eritrea in 2015 as an asylum seeker. According to the public prosecutor, it is unclear whether he will be deported to his home country during his sentence.
The prosecution had assumed that the 27-year-old wanted to force the passport from the district office of the Alb-Donau district on the day of the crime. The court, on the other hand, assumed that he wanted to stab the employee responsible for him. He wanted revenge.
Judge: “All of this speaks revenge”
According to the court, the man wanted a partner and expected to find a wife in Ethiopia or Sudan. He needed a passport to leave the country, which he did not get. He was therefore assumed that the district office had messed up his life. He is said to have fixed himself on this problem. The psychiatric expert never mentioned that he wanted to obtain a passport with the knife. “All of this speaks of revenge,” said the judge.
A find in the accused’s room also speaks for revenge. On a pad he wrote “No wife – no life” (no woman – no life) and “Strafe Strafe” in capital letters. The board assumed that he had made these notes before the crime and that, in his view, others deserved punishment.
According to the court, when the accused left his house, an asylum accommodation, with a knife, the two girls just passed it. The 27-year-old assumed they had seen the knife and feared he would not be able to exact his revenge. That’s why he is said to have decided to kill the two. He is said to have deceived the girls and first greeted them in a friendly manner. Then he attacked the 13-year-old behind the back of the 14-year-old.
Accused stabbed girls at least 19 times
The 13-year-old was able to escape. If she had stayed with her friend, the court was convinced that the defendant would have killed her as well. The man stabbed the 14-year-old at least 19 times. “Now he let out the anger towards her that he felt towards the district office,” said the judge.
It was an emotional process, and tears shed several times in the courtroom. The families of the two girls had joined the proceedings as joint plaintiffs.
When the verdict was announced, the presiding judge said: “There are always crimes that are particularly touching.” And he reached out to the families of the victims. The conscious decision of the families to consistently oppose hate speech despite their pain deserves respect. The parents of the two girls had called in letters not to exploit the act for hate speech against groups of people.
The asylum accommodation at the scene of the crime has since been demolished. Today a tree grows in a meadow there. A site fence designed by children gives a clear view of the property. The father of the dead had spoken out in favor of demolishing the accommodation and putting a playground or a playground on this site. The mayor of the municipality, Markus Häußler (independent), had declared before the trial began: “In the future, something beautiful should be created there.”