For a long time, the two supermarket owners and their lawyers are still sitting in the courtroom after the verdict. It seemed they wanted to avoid questions from the journalists and from Jonathan's family in the corridor. And there are still plenty of questions with the guilty verdict in the lawsuit for the deadly electric shocks in the Hamburg discounter market in May 2016.
Loose cable ends, hanging from the ceiling, a half-hanging out of the wall power outlet: "As the defendant should have imposed as a technical layman that the electrical installation is not professionally executed," summarized the magistrate in her opinion, the evidence together. It has therefore sentenced the operators of the business in the Harburg district to ten months imprisonment for negligent homicide.
For Jonathan's family members, the judge said, the fatal electric shocks would be murder or manslaughter. "That's the worst thing that can happen to parents." No judgment and no punishment could make up for that. Nobody wanted to kill the boy at checkout 4.
The managers of the market in the Arbeiterkiez, a 44-year-old and his 48-year-old sister, were guilty of neglect, the judge ruled. The four-year-old had bought at purchase with his father Josef D. (name changed) to a metal railing at the box office, which was under voltage. With petrified expression D. now pursued the verdict.
Deadly botch on the building?
Probably a loud "dilettantisch" accused transformer was responsible, with the help of a likewise metallic herbal shelf was illuminated. Who was ultimately responsible for the fact that closed the circuit, as the healthy boy - as the pediatrician said in the process - held on, could be loud court but also after several months of negotiation can not clarify.
Was screwed in renovation work 2015/16? The defenders of the siblings referred in the process to a no longer to be determined specialist company that has carried out the work. A test badge had the plant according to court no. The police therefore ensured only hours after the power surges the crime scene in the bustling market. According to the judge, what happened until then was not exactly reconstructable.
The condemned siblings did little in the process to change anything. They had their lawyers speak, who had applied for acquittal. When the judge asked about the accused's last words, her defenders pointed out that they "did not want to make use of it."
Silently, because speechless
For one of Jonathan's uncles on the wooden public bench, these sentences may have sounded like mockery. His daughter went to kindergarten with the boy. "We did not even hear a 'sorry' in the last words, but a little boy died." In front of the courthouse, he and other relatives had set up candles and tulips, next to a rosary. On a poster, they demanded justice. Second-level lawyer Walter Schäfers, who represented the boy's parents, now wants to check whether he is acting against the not yet final verdict. He said: "To correct repentance would have heard that also responsibility is taken over."
"Noticeably hold to account," wanted the magistrate, the two siblings. As a probationary condition, she therefore obliged them to transfer 500 or 600 euros to the state treasury each month for three years. "The defendants have violated their due diligence and control obligations," she said. The parents' lawyer Schäfers in turn said he was preparing a civil claim for damages.
The defender of the now convicted man had declared in the process, this is silent because he "the words are missing". Unlike Jonathan's mother, Schäfers says: "Even when she had her dead son in her arms, she asked: Police, drive over there so that others are not injured."
More than two and a half years after the boy, marked by electricity brands, died in a clinic north of the Elbe, she could no longer. The seat next to D. on the adjunct bank remained empty for verdict.