On the night of Monday, two police officers were fatally injured by shots during a traffic check in the Kusel district in the Palatinate. This was announced by the police in Kaiserslautern. The background to what happened is still unclear.
The officials from the Kusel Police Inspectorate were on a routine patrol. The fatal shots were fired at around 4:20 a.m. during a traffic check on District Road 22 in Ulmet. The police officers could have sent a radio message themselves, said a police spokesman. When reinforcements arrived at the scene, it was already too late for the 24-year-old police officer and her 29-year-old colleague.
The police said they were searching for the fleeing perpetrators with high pressure, now also in neighboring Saarland. The population is asked not to pick up hitchhikers. “At least one suspect is armed.” Traces were secured at the scene of the crime. The police said there was no description of the perpetrators or the getaway vehicle used. The direction of escape is also not known.
Kusel is a small town in the Palatinate with a good 5000 inhabitants near the border between Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The community of Ulmet is about five kilometers north of Kusel. Irene Mihalic, parliamentary director of the Greens in the Bundestag and herself a police officer, spoke to the bereaved via Twitter her condolences: “This constant worry about whether everything is going well. Now it has happened…” She very much hopes that the perpetrators will be caught quickly.