Some poachers, the alleged killers of two German policemen

A poaching was the trigger for the murder of two German policemen this Monday in the district of Kusel, in the federal state of Rhineland Palatinate, according to information from the prosecutor’s office in charge of the case. The investigating judge today ordered the entry into prison of the two suspects arrested hours after the crime. The two men, 38 and 32 years old, shot dead the agents of a patrol that surprised them at dawn with several game pieces in the trunk when they proceeded to a routine search. The older of the two already had a record for poaching and his partner for fraud. The investigators start from the assumption that both fired their hunting weapons, a rifle and a cartridge shotgun, against the agents, the superior prosecutor Stefan Orthen reported at a press conference.

While a young 24-year-old police officer was shot dead at close range in the head, her 29-year-old patrol partner was hit by four shots, one of them in the neck. The younger of the two agents did not have time to defend herself and died on the spot. His pistol was holstered and unused when the police officers who came to his aid found the bodies of the two officers. The other police officer had time to fire several shots, but missed the attackers and died from the severity of his injuries shortly after the rescue forces arrived at the scene. The two agents died around 4:20 am on Monday on a country road halfway between the small towns of Ulmet and Maywellerhof, in an unpopulated area with very little traffic.

The quick capture of the two suspects was possible due to an oversight by the older of them, who left his identity document forgotten at the scene of the crime. He had probably handed it over to the agents when they proceeded to control the vehicle he was driving. In mid-afternoon on Monday, the police published a photograph and the search and arrest warrant against Andreas Johannes Schmitt, the elder of the two, and owner of a game butcher shop and a bakery in the town of Neunkirchen, 50 kilometers from the scene of the attack. crime. Shortly after, both were arrested in the town of Sulzbach, in the neighboring state of Saarland, by a commando of special police forces without offering resistance. One of them was still wearing a butcher’s apron, probably to cut up the pieces they had killed before being surprised by the police patrol.

During the search of the main suspect’s home, the agents found an arsenal consisting of five handguns, a repeating shotgun, ten long guns, a crossbow, a silencer and numerous ammunition. He had no gun license. The one he had for hunting had been taken away due to poaching and he hadn’t been able to get it back. His accomplice kept two other long weapons at his home. Schmitt has kept absolute silence since he was arrested. His accomplice has admitted to the investigating judge that he practiced poaching, but denies having shot at the officers. The prosecution starts from the assumption that both wanted to prevent their illegal hunting practices from coming to light with the death of the policemen.

The two policemen coincidentally coincided with their murderers. Shortly before his death they had informed the central office that they were proceeding to search a vehicle with “suspicious persons” and that they had discovered several game pieces in its trunk. They called for reinforcements and announced that they were proceeding to identify the occupants. Two minutes later they called again on the radio. “They are shooting at us,” were his last words before communication was cut off. The patrols that arrived ten minutes later could no longer do anything. The attackers had fled, the young officer was lying dead in front of the police vehicle and her partner was dying behind the car. He passed away shortly after. The policeman had managed to fire 14 times, all of his magazine, but apparently without hitting. The crime has caused a strong commotion in Germany. The German Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, conveyed his condolences to the relatives of the two victims, while his Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, spoke of “execution” when commenting on the circumstances of the death of the two agents.