A 29-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder after the sensational fatal shooting of a then 30-year-old acquaintance in Nuremberg’s southern part of the city. In its verdict announced on Thursday, the 5th Large Criminal Chamber of the Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court considered it proven that the man shot two men on the street in October 2022 after an argument.
One of the two people hit died, the second survived with serious injuries. The court also noted the particular gravity of the guilt, which makes early release from prison much more difficult.
The 29-year-old has been on trial in Nuremberg since December 2023 for murder and attempted murder. He himself saw the shooting as self-defense because he had been threatened and insulted by the men after the argument. In his “last word” on Thursday, he apologized to the bereaved. He wishes the shots hadn’t been fired.
The shooter, who came to Germany from Turkey via Belarus together with one of his later victims disguised as Ukrainian refugees, was then able to escape and go abroad. Three months later he was arrested by an Italian police special operations team in a hotel in Rimini.
Police investigators assumed disputes over shisha tobacco and e-cigarette businesses were the background to the dispute. The exact motive could not be clarified during the trial. Numerous witnesses from those involved provided sometimes contradictory insights into a network of possible criminal activities surrounding the trio.
The 29-year-old’s defense lawyers had called for an acquittal. They had argued that the shots were fired in a scuffle after their client was attacked. Until the very end, they tried to prove their client’s innocence by submitting evidence.