Enlarge image
A police officer stands in the entrance hall of Nuremberg Central Station (symbolic image)
Photo: Daniel Karmann / dpa
There is apparently no connection between the death of a 30-year-old federal police officer in Nuremberg and a previous attack. This is what the autopsy of the body revealed, the Middle Franconia police headquarters said. The man was attacked on Thursday night and collapsed and died during a visit to the doctor on Thursday.
On the orders of the Nuremberg-Fürth public prosecutor's office, the police officer's body was autopsied on Friday. According to the preliminary results, the man died of a “medical cause”. “According to the current status of the investigation, there is no connection to the previous attack,” the police said. Several media outlets had previously reported.
According to the information, the officer was on duty at Nuremberg Central Station on Thursday night. At around 4:20 a.m. he was attacked in a toilet facility and hit in the upper body and head. In the morning he went to the doctor because of physical complaints, collapsed and died - but not as a result of the beating.
An internal report from the Federal Police, which is available to SPIEGEL, shows that the Federal Police had been informed before the operation about a physical altercation between a 39-year-old, a cleaner and two employees of Deutsche Bahn Security. The 39-year-old then hit the police officer “suddenly in the right eye with his fist.” The attacker was arrested and eventually released. The police officer suffered swelling and redness in his eye and then stopped working.
In an initial reaction, the new federal police commissioner, Uli Grötsch, who only took office on Wednesday, blamed the attack. “The fatal blow against a colleague” shows in a frightening way the blurring of the boundaries of violence and brutality that police officers are exposed to every day in operational situations, explained Grötsch.
The Federal Police in Bavaria posted on Friday on Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased.”
Faeser: “Deeply shocked”
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) also said she was “deeply shocked by the death of a young civil servant.” There is no question, says Faeser, that “the federal police officers work for the safety of all of us every day and often have to put themselves in considerable danger in doing so.” She added: “Our police officers have all my appreciation and great respect.”
Nuremberg Central Station is considered a crime hotspot. According to the German Bundestag, in 2022 it was one of the three train stations where the federal police recorded the most sexual crimes, violent crimes and property crimes.
aeh/jdl/AFP/dpa