While intoxicated, an 18-year-old student stabs his own grandfather to death. In court, prosecutors and defense present two similar versions of the crime - which differ in one important respect.
The alcohol excesses of an 18-year-old student in Geesthacht ended in a terrible bloody crime and five years of youth imprisonment. The Lübeck Regional Court sentenced the adolescent to manslaughter for killing his grandfather in March with numerous knife wounds in the upper body. The Greater Criminal Court as a juvenile court thus followed the request of the public prosecutor. The adolescent's defense attorney had pleaded for no more than three years of youth imprisonment.
The 18-year-old had confessed to killing his 70-year-old grandfather in March in Geesthacht with several stab wounds in his parents' home. The partial confession has no weight in view of the evidence, said the presiding judge Helga von Lukowicz. The young man was drunk at about 2.5 per thousand.
The family of the student who was present, who followed the explanations of the public prosecutor, defense attorney and judge with an alert eye, reacted in disbelief to the verdict. She had obviously hoped for a lighter sentence. In his last word, the boy turned to his relatives and said: "It's hard to sit here and listen to everything. I want to tell my family how sorry I am for everything and that I love my family with all my heart." His family, including the victim's widow and the student's grandmother, struggled with their emotions.
How did it happen? The public prosecutor and the defense put forward two similar versions, but they differed in one important respect. The prosecution assumes that the grandfather, who wanted to pick up the drunken grandson from his parents' house and bring him and his grandmother to sober up, and the accused got into an argument. This was the fatal knife attack. According to the defense attorney, however, the 18-year-old had the knife in his hand because he had suicidal intentions. He was stabbed when he tried to steal his gun.
The judge brushed aside the lawyer's version, which the accused himself had put forward during the hearing: the family had prepared the intention to commit suicide "in order to be able to cope with the crime." According to the expert testimony, the accused did not show any desperation, only a depressive mood, she said.
The hard drinking, always alone and late in the evening, was rated by Lukowicz as a "trying out phase". It cannot be ruled out that the defendant's ability to control was impaired by alcohol. According to the presiding judge, the court is assuming a conditional intent to kill. "It was about getting out of the situation."
She also said of the 18-year-old: "He has to live with the fact that he killed a person, and not just any person, but his beloved grandfather." Right at the beginning of his plea, the public prosecutor spoke of the circumstances of the crime as events that "could only be described as a tragedy for the family".
The slim defendant in the green jogging suit took everything in attentively. He is considered to be highly talented, which according to witnesses has not made life any easier for him so far. In the meantime, while he was in custody, he sat his Abitur exams and passed with an average grade. The presiding judge warned the young offender that he must now work through the crime on his own responsibility.
