Drug deals, murder and riots: Violence and riots occur again and again in the trade fair town of Riem. Just last week, a 16-year-old was critically injured with a knife. Also on New Year’s Eve 2022 there was damage to property, fights and attacks on the police and fire brigade with pyrotechnics by around 30 violent young people. Four young men are currently facing charges in the district court. But, as it turned out, three of them apparently had nothing to do with the violence.
In her indictment, prosecutor Kristina Motzet summarized what happened on New Year’s Eve: Around 10 p.m., around 30 young people were on Willy-Brand-Platz in front of the Riem Arcaden. Some of them wore balaclavas, snoods and gloves “to conceal their identities.” Then there was a lot of excitement on the forecourt: the young people threw garbage cans, chairs and tables around, also to set up a barricade for drivers. One ripped a bike rack from its anchorage and used it as a ladder to destroy a surveillance camera.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, witnesses who spoke to the perpetrators and asked them to stop the riot were attacked, beaten and kicked – while accomplices filmed everything on their cell phones. At around 2 a.m., when the police and fire brigade were already on site, a teenage boy threw rockets and firecrackers at the emergency services from the roof of the Riem Arcaden. A firecracker exploded about four inches behind a firefighter. “It was only because of a lucky coincidence,” says prosecutor Motzet, that the man remained uninjured.
The police were subsequently able to identify eight young suspects, two of whom have already been convicted. Now four more young men aged 18 and 19 are sitting in the dock. Three of them, who graduated together last year and are currently studying, said they had arranged to meet up to celebrate the new year. “Something started to happen” among various groups. And they allowed themselves to be “drawn along”: they threw chairs against shop windows, destroyed a camera, and several tables flew.
But, they assure you, they had nothing to do with the brawl that followed. They wouldn’t even know the young people from the other groups. When the police came, one of them says, he realized that everything was no longer fun, “it was getting out of hand.” In a kind of “short circuit” he initially tried to run away, but then stopped.
Things became really embarrassing and unpleasant for the trio when, a few months later, the police showed up at their doors early in the morning to search their houses. Everyone still lives with their parents. The fourth member of the group admits through his lawyer that he fired a rocket from the roof of the Riem Arcaden that night. “He doesn’t know where it went,” says the lawyer.
In the end, the court imposed educational instructions and fines in accordance with juvenile criminal law.