In the case of a toppled noise barrier on Autobahn 3 near Cologne with one dead, 15 suspects are being investigated.
According to the Cologne public prosecutor's office on Friday, there are seven employees of the State Office for Roads in North Rhine-Westphalia, two test engineers and six employees of construction companies.
In November 2020, a piece of concrete had come loose from the wall and killed a driver in her car.
In connection with the investigation, officials from the public prosecutor's office and the police searched the business premises of two construction companies in Ibbenbüren and Münster and the state road construction company in Gelsenkirchen on Thursday, it was said.
There is a suspicion of negligent homicide.
The public prosecutor's office in North Rhine-Westphalia therefore has indications that the attachment of the noise protection wall deviated from the originally planned construction or the building inspectorate approval and that this was subsequently not remedied.
"The attachment of the two upper breakpoints should have deviated from the tested statics, the product specifications and the building authority approval," said senior public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer of the German Press Agency.
"In addition, unauthorized welding work is said to have been carried out at the breakpoints.
Incidentally, the brackets are said not to have had adequate corrosion protection.”
This could have been the reason why the six-tonne concrete element came loose from the noise protection wall on the A3 motorway near Cologne-Dellbrück.
The searches served to find and secure documents relevant to the proceedings – in particular the e-mail traffic.
The evaluation is ongoing.