Epress.am News from Armenia
A defendant accused of embezzlement shot dead a prosecutor at a court in the southern German city of Dachau Wednesday, a spokesperson for the state justice ministry said, AFP reported.
The 54-year-old, named only as Rudolf U., was set to receive a suspended sentence for fraud and not paying wage-related social security, but is now expected to be charged with murder for the attack in Dachau’s civil court, The Local, Germany’s news in English, reported.
Judge Lukas Neubeck was reading out his verdict, which included a one-year suspended sentence, when Rudolf U. pulled out a pistol and fired at him, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Thursday.
The judge ducked out of the way of the shot, and Rudolf U. then turned his weapon on the 31-year-old prosecutor, hitting him three times, once in the shoulder, arm and abdomen.
Desperate attempts to save the prosecutor, named in the German press as Tilman T., failed and he died in hospital. He is said to have studied in New York and to have been married to an American woman who moved to Germany to be with him.
Two customs officers who had been called as witnesses in the case overpowered Rudolf U. and held him until police officers arrested him, confiscating a French 6.35-millimetre calibre pistol, the paper said. Speaking on Wednesday evening, just hours after the attack, public prosecutor Kristina Karbach said it seemed Rudolf U. obtained the gun illegally.
There were no security checks on Rudolf U. when he entered the court, despite what one witness said was the transport firm owner’s previously aggressive behaviour.
“I knew something would happen,” the court official told Süddeutsche Zeitung. “He had already been acting up in the hearings and was totally refusing to comply. He even had a go at his own lawyer.”
Security checks were not normal at the court, as no serious crimes are tried there, the paper said.