She suspected it. And he apparently did too: “He knew what was going to happen. He was aware that he could have died that day.” At least that’s what the widow of the man who was shot in Nuremberg’s Südstadt in October 2022 said after the crime in a telephone conversation with the victim’s sister, heard on Wednesday in the murder trial at the Nuremberg-Fürth regional court.
On that October evening, her husband, 30, who was killed, met the defendant, 29, and another friend, 35, who was seriously injured in the crime, to argue. “He’s been completely in his own movie lately,” the widow said in the phone call that was played. “I can’t remember why I made that statement,” she now contradicted, only confirming that her husband had recently taken less care of the family and was at home.
It’s another tangled episode in a case that continues to raise many questions. First of all: Why did the three men, who actually wanted to set up a distribution business for shisha and tobacco products, argue? And: Why did this dispute culminate in four shots from a Belgian army pistol, including one fatal one? According to the public prosecutor’s office, the defendant lured the other two men to the meeting for an alleged discussion. The man is said to have announced his alleged crime two days in advance.
The case had caused “great consternation and uncertainty” in Nuremberg, as Middle Franconia’s police chief Adolf Blöchl said after the arrest of the now accused – especially in the Turkish community to which the victims belonged. There is also uncertainty because the suspected shooter was only caught in Rimini three months after the crime.
At the start of the trial in December, the accused Turk, who is said to have entered Germany disguised as a Ukrainian refugee, appeared to be noticeably relaxed about the trial. Then on Wednesday he sobbed as the phone played; had tears in her eyes while the widow said she had been suffering from anxiety disorders since the crime. The woman was pregnant for the second time at the time of the murder. The birth without her husband was traumatic. “There are days when I don’t realize he’s no longer alive.”
The court wants to clarify why in the remaining 25 days of negotiations. A verdict is expected at the end of March.