Six years after the rowing accident on Lake Starnberg, the district court found the two former trainers guilty on Monday. The defendants – a 72-year-old biologist and a 55-year-old doctor – were sentenced on the second day of the trial for negligent homicide by failure to pay 90 daily rates of 30 euros each.
The two Munich residents had already paid 10,000 and 35,000 euros to charitable organizations, respectively, in the long-term proceedings, which were initially to be discontinued against monetary requirements of 12,000 and 50,000 euros without a trial at the local court, which was taken into account in the judgment. The defense lawyers, on the other hand, had demanded that the proceedings be discontinued or that their clients be acquitted due to insufficient files.
On April 19, 2015, the Munich high school student Leo drowned in a group of schoolchildren training in gusty winds in eight degrees cold water. It remained unclear whether he had fallen into the water or, in an emergency, wanted to swim to the west bank about 400 meters away. The tall beginner rower was assigned to a single boat and was apparently instructed to row in a circle alone in a buoy field in front of the Munich Rowing Club (MRC) in front of Starnberg. But then, from around 6.15 p.m. onwards, Leo was no longer spotted by the trainers who had escorted larger boats out of sight on the east bank. Judge Karin Beuting therefore accused the supervisors of not having adequately supervised the 13-year-old. She chalked up the experienced trainers for having left the student unattended for far too long on this cold water day, despite the increased risk. That was “the mistake that cost Leo his life”. And there is no doubt about this failure, the judge justified her judgment.
Prosecutor Marc Heim also saw it as proven that the supervisory rules of the MRC had been violated and that the special responsibility for training children and young people in this sport had been disregarded – and one therefore had to speak of negligent homicide. The 13-year-old was said to have been alone on the lake without a cell phone, safety vest and motorized escort boat. Lawyer Annette von Stetten, who represented Leo’s parents in the secondary lawsuit, denounced further “massive omissions”. Because under the weather conditions and the “potentially life-threatening situation”, the defendants should not have let the child into the ice-cold water in a single boat without visual contact and capsizing training – especially since dry training would have been possible instead, said von Stetten. It is also incomprehensible why the disappearance of Leo was only noticed after training around 7.45 p.m. when the father wanted to pick up his son on the club premises.
Leo’s mother Magda-Lia Bloos accused the caregivers during the trial of making a wrong decision to put her only child in a hopeless situation and thus “having Leo on her conscience”. With the current conviction of the lack of supervision and with the public legal processing of the accident, after years at least something could be achieved in the case, said the parents after the judgment, which is not yet final.
The defendants’ defense lawyers rejected the allegations and made it clear that the exact course of the accident at the lake could not be clarified. It is also possible that the student did not follow instructions and rowed out onto the lake. The defendants expressed their sympathy for the family’s suffering.