Press
A German army soldier is said to have killed four people, including a small child. The public prosecutor’s office is now pressing charges. The allegations are serious.
Scheeßel/Bothel – After the fatal shooting of four people in the Rotenburg district of Lower Saxony, the public prosecutor’s office has filed charges. The investigators say they accuse the soldier of four counts of murder. He is said to have killed the victims out of hatred and revenge, and marital problems were the reason behind it. The Verden district court must now decide whether to open proceedings.
The soldier is suspected of having aimed a weapon at four people. The victims did not survive the attack on the night of March 1st. They were all from the circle of the alleged perpetrator’s wife; the two had separated. The 32-year-old is said to have first killed her new boyfriend and his mother in Scheeßel. He is then said to have shot a friend of his ex-partner and her three-year-old daughter in Bothel, a few kilometers away.
The next morning, the German is said to have turned himself in at the Von Düring barracks in the town of Rotenburg (Wümme). Rotenburg is close to the suspected crime scenes. The soldier drove to the barracks, got out of a car and identified himself. Police officers who were called arrested the man. He has been in custody since the crime. According to the police, the suspect is not a member of the barracks.
The soldier was armed with an assault rifle and a pistol. According to investigators, the weapons did not come from the Bundeswehr’s stocks. A Molotov cocktail was in the driver’s door of his car, and ammunition was in the trunk next to a Bundeswehr backpack. It was initially unclear what the man intended to do with them.
Shortly before the crime, the still-wife and her new boyfriend – one of the victims – had sought help and reported the suspect for threatening behavior. According to investigators, a so-called threat interview took place on the same day. The public prosecutor’s office had announced that it would investigate in its own proceedings whether the suspect had actually threatened the couple prior to the crime. dpa
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