Darmstadt: Judgment after shooting in Rüsselsheim

• fromClaudia Kabel

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Two families are fighting. Shots are fired. The Darmstadt district court is now sentencing a 25-year-old from Rüsselsheim to more than seven years in prison.

It was a major operation for the police: a year ago, a dispute between members of two large families escalated in Rüsselsheim city center. A 25-year-old man of Kurdish origin with a German passport pulled a gun and fired. A 33-year-old with Turkish citizenship was injured.

The Darmstadt district court has now sentenced Akit K. to seven years and three months’ imprisonment for attempted manslaughter, the court said. The prosecutor had asked for nine years for attempted murder. However, the court “saw no evidence of the murder characteristic of the treachery,” said prosecutor Eva Wörner of the Frankfurter Rundschau.

The defense pleaded for acquittal and assumed police misconduct. The reason: the members of the attacked family were initially not questioned as accused, but only as witnesses, as prosecutor Wörner described.

It later turned out that “presumably there was mutual shooting”. The investigators could not have known this at the beginning, which is why, in their opinion, there was no wrongdoing. There were proceedings against other parties involved with various degrees of suspicion, said Wörner. However, there was insufficient evidence to file charges.

The now convicted K. lived in Ruesselsheim. At around 4 a.m. on the night of April 27, 2019, he entered the “Sila” café, got into a dispute with the 33-year-old and then shot him several times. The attacked man fled with his brother. When the police arrived, around 20 people had fled the scene and nine people between the ages of 13 and 53 were arrested.

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