AAt the end more than 2500 people came to say goodbye. They stand reverently in rows in the Freisen cemetery in Saarland, including hundreds of police officers in uniform. After a moving funeral service, they pay their last respects to a 29-year-old police officer who was shot on duty with a colleague (24) in the western Palatinate a good two weeks ago.
Grief and pain are great in the officer’s home community. In a church service on Tuesday, police chief Michael Denne spoke about the act of “a terrible event that shocked and upset us all. Nothing is as it was. There are things that we cannot understand,” says the police chief from Kaiserslautern.
People laid flowers and lit candles in front of the church. “We miss you,” it says. “You are always in our hearts.” A local resident says: “What happened is a disaster. The whole village is depressed.”
The mourners on Tuesday are larger than expected. Many hold yellow roses in their hands. Since there are not enough places in the Church of St. Remigius, the non-public funeral service will be broadcast in a hall with 500 guests. And in front of the building, hundreds of people follow the service via audio transmission. Motionless. In great silence.
“No one can understand”
After that, people silently march through town to the cemetery. A guard of honor from the Rhineland-Palatinate police gives the young man a final escort.
The police commissioner and his police colleague were shot dead early in the morning of January 31 during a vehicle check near Kusel in Rhineland-Palatinate. Presumably by two poachers who caught her red-handed there. The 24-year-old police candidate will be buried this Wednesday in Homburg-Erbach in Saarland.
“No one can understand why, why, why such a despicable act was committed here,” says Freisen’s mayor Karl-Josef Scheer (SPD). “It’s a bad situation for all of us.” The suffering that lies on the family, relatives, friends and acquaintances simply cannot be put into words. The dead man was a very fine fellow.
“He was very popular throughout the town,” says Hans-Dieter Becker. Becker is chairman of FC Freisen, where the policeman has played soccer since childhood, most recently as a defender in the first team. “He was always active and very ambitious.” His death was “incredibly tragic. We are all sad.”
The crime scene is just 20 kilometers away. On the day of the crime, two suspects (32 and 38 years old) were arrested in Saarland – they are now in custody on suspicion of joint murder. The investigators assume that the two men wanted to cover up poaching with the act. 22 dead fallow deer were found in their car.
“They won’t take that off anymore”
“That’s evil par excellence,” says Becker. “It runs cold down your back.” The act had caused horror across the country. At the beginning of February, Rhineland-Palatinate commemorated the dead with a nationwide minute’s silence and a funeral service with relatives and colleagues in Kusel. An official act of mourning is being prepared by the Rhineland-Palatinate government and police, it is said.
“We have to do more to protect those who protect us,” says the District Administrator of the St. Wendel district, Udo Recktenwald (CDU), on the sidelines of the funeral service. The police deserve “appreciation, cover and support”. All the more “after such a terrible act”.
Saarland state police chief Norbert Rupp said after the funeral: “We as a police family are still extremely paralyzed. With this terrible, completely nonsensical act, we basically just function.” I hope that “maybe this terrible act will give society a little jolt and people will remember that people are there to help others” .
The Justice Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Herbert Mertin (FDP), recently said that he hoped that the crime would be clarified quickly. You owe it to the two who died. One of the suspects admitted to having poached with the other suspect on the night of the crime. According to the information, the other is silent.
Life in the football club and in Freisen will continue. Somehow and at some point, says Becker. For the victim’s parents, however, everything is different now. “They don’t take that off anymore.”
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