In front of the Aral gas station in Idar-Oberstein there are candles, flowers, stuffed animals and greeting cards on Wednesday, in between you can see photos of a cheerful young man who apparently had many friends.

One card reads: “What happened to you is difficult for us to grasp.

You just want to cry. ”The 20-year-old student who can be seen in the pictures had worked in the gas station.

There he was shot on Saturday evening - according to the current state of the investigation, he had previously advised a man who did not wear a mouth and nose cover of the mask requirement.

Sebastian Eder

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET.

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Julian Staib

Political correspondent for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland based in Wiesbaden.

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It takes seven minutes by car from the gas station to the house of the alleged perpetrator, Mario N., who is on remand on suspicion of murder. It is located in the suburb of Enzweiler in front of a high wall, behind which a federal road passes. From the house you can see a picturesque valley. Around some single-family houses, the neighbors know each other.

Pia K. lives directly across from the accused and asks for an interview in her cosmetics store. “It bothers me that the police call him a blank slate,” she says. The public prosecutor announced on Tuesday that the accused was not yet known to the police. Pia K. says that she had had trouble with Mario N. for years, that he insulted her several times, for example when a car was parked in front of his house. Another time he insulted her on the street in front of the police as a "dirty cunt", the officers had been there to disturb another neighbor and N. suspected her of calling the police. "It was very aggressive and had a very short fuse." But she never reported him. "Otherwise he would have given me even more hell."

He got into the little things

Several neighbors state that Mario N. previously lived in East Germany.

Around ten years ago, the 49-year-old suspect is said to have bought the two-story house and moved in with his wife, with whom there was apparently an argument.

Most recently, N. lived with another woman, say several neighbors.

His father is said to have lived in Herrstein, 13 kilometers away.

According to information from several neighbors, he is said to have committed suicide with a firearm last year.

A spokesman for the prosecutor did not want to confirm this on Wednesday.

On the night of Sunday Pia K. recognized her neighbor on a wanted poster.

"At first I didn't dare to call the police." On Sunday morning at five o'clock she wrote to a criminal investigator she knew personally on Facebook, asking for anonymity.

When the policeman read this later, Mario N. had already been arrested, he had turned himself in in front of the police station in Idar-Oberstein.

According to the police, during his interrogation he is said to have stated that he rejects the anti-corona measures altogether.

According to the prosecutor, the accused is said to have said that he felt pushed into a corner and saw no other way out than to set an example.

The victim appeared to him to be "responsible for the overall situation because it enforced the rules".

N. have increased in little things

“I think Corona was just the icing on the cake,” says Pia K. “He stood in my shop four times because of banalities and yelled at me.

The fifth time I might have gotten a shot in the head. ”N.“ got into the little things and then got angrier and angrier. ”

Other neighbors describe N. as a corona denier.

A woman who lives right next to his house said on Wednesday that she proudly showed him the patch after her vaccination and that Mario N. was beside himself.

"You are dying of shit," he called and spoke of hundreds of thousands of people who have been vaccinated.

“He was one hundred percent convinced of that.” Another neighbor told the Bild newspaper: “For him we were crazy because we wore masks”.

Corona thought Mario N. was a lie.