The 52-year-old man killed six people and injured dozens in December 2020 after driving an SUV at high speed on a pedestrian street in Trier.
The author of a massive outrage on a pedestrian street in the German town of Trier, which caused the death of 6 people and injuries of varying degrees to more than 30, has been sentenced this Tuesday to life imprisonment and admission to a psychiatric center in high security by a court in the town of Rhineland-Palatinate, in the west of the country. The convicted, 52-year-old, was found guilty by the judges of six murders, 18 attempted murders and 14 cases of serious injuries. On December 1, 2020, the defendant entered the pedestrian zone of the historic city with his car and, at high speed, intentionally ran over anyone who crossed his path. However, after a year of proceedings, the reasons that led the man to carry out that murderous race aboard his vehicle are unknown. The prosecutors indicated that the reasons must be sought in the psychological disorders of the defendant.
In the massive outrage, carried out with a heavy all-terrain vehicle, a nine-month-old baby, his 45-year-old father and three women aged 73, 52 and 25 perished. A 77-year-old man died months later as a result of his injuries. The judges considered it proven that the convicted man invaded the pedestrian street with his car with the intention of killing as many people as possible. To the balance of deaths and serious injuries that appear in the sentence, we must add numerous minor injuries and more than 300 eyewitnesses who were traumatized by the scenes of horror that were experienced during and after the mass outrage. Determinant for the sentence was the analysis of a forensic psychiatrist, who ruled that the man suffers from delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, with decreased guilt and high danger to society.
The 52-year-old man feels “the victim of a great state plot” against him, he feels persecuted, listened to and constantly observed and does not remember anything of the moment of the events, explained the forensic expert. The defendant’s own court-appointed lawyers had requested in his last intervention the admission of his client to a high-security psychiatric center. With his sentence, the judges complied with the request for punishment from the prosecutors, but also from the private lawyers of the victims and their families. The process, which began on August 19, 2021, took place over 40 sessions, in which dozens of witnesses recounted their traumatizing experiences. Many agreed to report that the perpetrator of the multiple crime intentionally directed his vehicle against several of his victims. “As if he pointed a gun before shooting,” explained one of the witnesses.
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