The appeal process in Siegen against a train driver in the so-called manhole cover case was surprisingly overturned on Tuesday due to the death of the accused.
"The defendant died yesterday in Lünen," said the Siegen district court on Tuesday when the trial was supposed to begin after the man's appeal.
A spokeswoman said that the news of the death took one by surprise.
The man was accused of staging an attack on a Hessian State Railway train he was running in April 2019 and of having installed two manhole covers on a bridge for this purpose.
A death investigation was initiated at the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund.
The man had died, further information could not be given about the case, said a spokesman for the authorities.
The district court of Siegen should deal with the case after the train driver appealed against his first-instance judgment from October 2020.
The district court in Bad Berleburg in Siegerland had sentenced him to a prison term of one year and nine months without parole - for pretending to be a criminal offense and for deliberately dangerous interference with rail traffic.
The incident at Siegen near the border between North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse caused a stir.
The two heavy manhole covers had crashed into the windshield of the train.
The train driver on the train, which was still unoccupied early in the morning, was unharmed.
After a murder attack against him had not been ruled out, suspicion fell on the train driver himself in the course of the investigation. Investigators found his DNA traces on manhole covers and ropes.
The judgment was also based on expert opinions on fiber traces that were assigned to the then 50-year-old.
Numerous police officers also gave testimony.
The defendant had denied the allegations.