A Bavarian court has sentenced a police officer to five months in prison for failing to launch an investigation against a man accused of attacking his girlfriend with a knife in August 2024, which was replaced by three years of probation and a donation to a victims’ organization.
Five months later, the same man killed a small child and an adult, while injuring three other people, while attacking a kindergarten group with a knife in a park in Aschaffenburg.
The 29-year-old officer was convicted of obstruction of justice, with prosecutors arguing that their failure led to no criminal investigation of the Afghan national, whose trial began earlier this month.
Judge says officer showed negligence and laziness
Judge Torsten Kemmerer at the Alzenau district court in Bavaria sentenced the officer to five months in prison, but ordered the defendant, with no prior convictions, to serve three years on probation and donate €3,000 (about $3,500) to a victims’ organization rather than go to prison.
The decision can be appealed.
Alzenau is a small town in the district of Aschaffenburg, near the state border with Hesse.
Kemmerer acknowledged that the case was a complex one involving a small crime with different versions of events, but said it was still a law enforcement officer’s duty to investigate the crime.
“He did nothing, did nothing,” Kemmerer said in court Tuesday, accusing the officer of “negligence” and “laziness.”
Prosecutor Christophe Gillot, seeking an 18-month prison sentence, had argued that the defendant “knew” that the case involved a “dangerous attack with a knife”.
“We learned this from evidence samples, video and witness statements,” Guillot said.
Defense lawyers meanwhile had appealed for acquittal, arguing it had not been sufficiently proven that the policeman knew about the Ukrainian woman’s injuries or his alleged use of the knife.
The defendant declined to comment in court on questions about why he did not file a criminal investigation.
The trial heard evidence of poor communication between four officers involved in the case, but the prosecutor’s office ultimately dropped charges against the other three because they were not lead investigators.
The Aschaffenberg attacker is currently on trial
Prosecutor Guillot said it was unclear whether an earlier criminal investigation would have prevented a fatal knife attack in the same area five months later in January, but he also argued that it was not relevant to the case.
The case, and news of the defendant being known to law enforcement, resurfaced repeatedly ahead of the February national elections in Germany and prompted debate over migration and deportation procedures.
The 28-year-old man’s lawyers do not dispute their client’s involvement in the attack in Aschaffenburg’s Schöntal Park in January. But their argument is that his mental condition is not fit to face punishment and he should be kept in a psychiatric facility indefinitely.
An expert witness was examined at that trial who stated that the man was paranoid schizophrenic. He had previously been convicted of a separate attack and had been temporarily sent to psychiatric care facilities three times.
The Afghan citizen’s intentions or reasoning for attacking the nursery group on the streets are still unclear.
The decision in that case is currently expected this Thursday, October 30.
Edited by: Louis Olofse