In the early morning of January 31, two police officers noticed a box van on Kreisstraße 22 in the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Kusel. You want to control him. The last sign of life can be heard from them when the 29-year-old chief inspector radios for help at 4:21 a.m.: “Come quickly! Shoot, shoot!” A few minutes later, the chief inspector and his 24-year-old colleague, a police inspector candidate, are dead. The bullets hit them in the head.
The Kaiserslautern district court has now sentenced the 39-year-old main defendant Andreas S. to life imprisonment for two murders. The court also determined the particular gravity of the guilt. This excludes a release from prison after 15 years. With the verdict, the court followed the request of the public prosecutor’s office, it is not yet final.
Andreas S. (right) now has to go to prison for life for the double murder.
(Photo: Uwe Anspach/dpa)
The district court found the co-defendant Florian V guilty of complicity in commercial poaching and of evading criminal prosecution, but he remains unpunished. The 33-year-old, who was initially also investigated for murder, was later considered the most important witness for the prosecution. Because Florian V. testified comprehensively before the trial began and thus contributed to the investigation of the crime, the court refrained from punishing him. He is said to have helped remove the traces, but not shot. He was believed to have had nothing to do with the shooting. The two men were arrested shortly after the crime in neighboring Saarland.
Ten months ago the police officers were murdered, for which Andreas S. had to answer before the district court of Kaiserslautern. The deed, as senior public prosecutor Stefan Orthen made clear in his plea, had “executive character”. Andreas S. killed the police officers to cover up poaching. In addition, the murder characteristic of greed was fulfilled: the man feared that he would no longer be able to sell the game he had killed. In the van at the scene of the crime, 22 freshly shot deer are said to have been lying. The public prosecutor’s office had demanded that a particular degree of guilt be determined because of the “particular reprehensibility” of the crime. The defense, on the other hand, assessed the act as “maximum bodily harm resulting in death” – and only in one case.
Andreas S. had testified in the process that he had killed the 29-year-old police commissioner in a kind of self-defense situation. But his accomplice at the time shot the 24-year-old police officer. Florian V. had always rejected that. The act had caused nationwide horror.
Faeser: “Those who protect us deserve our protection and our respect.”
After the verdict was announced, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said she was “still appalled that a supposedly routine check can turn into a deadly trap.” The act shows how dangerous the service of the police officers can be: “Those who protect us deserve our protection and our respect.”
The Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer and Interior Minister Michael Ebling (both SPD) thanked the population for their great sympathy in a joint press statement. The Rhineland-Palatinate police had received more than 20,000 letters: “This enormous sympathy from the population gave great comfort at this difficult time.”
The Kaiserslautern police chief Michael Denne made it clear that the two killed colleagues would still be missing: “Our thoughts are with you and the bereaved.” The director of the Rhineland-Palatinate Police College, Uwe Lederer, said: “The terrible act hit us deeply.” The two police officers would “remain in all of our memories”. The two and another 45 colleagues will be commemorated at a memorial erected on the Hahn campus for colleagues killed on duty.
The state chairwoman of the police union (GdP) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Sabrina Kunz, had hoped for “a consistent constitutional decision” before the verdict was announced. We mourn the loss of two young people who had to lose their lives in the exercise of their service. The anniversary of the fact in two months will reopen wounds. “We will never forget what happened,” said Kunz.