Even two days after the death of a 16-year-old refugee from Senegal by five shots from a submachine gun during a police operation in the north of Dortmund, many questions were still unanswered on Wednesday.
"We are in the process of gathering all the facts, all the testimonies of witnesses, in order to be able to evaluate the whole event," said senior public prosecutor Carsten Dombert of the FAZ. "We therefore do not want to give any further information for the time being."
Pure burger
Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Follow I follow
The investigators have already gathered essential information.
Mohammed D., an unaccompanied refugee, had only been in Dortmund for a few days after a short period in Rhineland-Palatinate.
There he was accommodated in a residential group of the Catholic Church, in which young people of different nationalities live together.
On Monday afternoon, one of the supervisors called the police because D. was brandishing a knife.
The caregiver feared that the youth, who had self-administered psychiatric treatment for mental health problems, was planning to kill himself.
No illegal burst of fire
Shortly thereafter, a total of eleven police officers arrived at the scene, an inner courtyard right next to the Sankt-Antonius-Kirche.
Her mission was to protect the young man from himself.
According to information from security circles, however, the situation is said to have deteriorated in a tragic and dynamic way.
D. is said to have approached the officers with the 15 to 20 centimeter long knife.
Attempts in several languages to persuade him to drop his gun are said to have been unsuccessful, as has the use of pepper spray.
The officers then resorted to an electric shock device, a so-called taser.
But D. was only hit by one of the two electrodes.
The Taser was used on the second attempt – but according to information from security circles, it did not put D. out of action.
The fact that patrol officers in North Rhine-Westphalia also carry submachine guns is nothing unusual, but rather the norm as a consequence of incidents such as the Winnenden killing spree or terrorist situations.
The same ammunition is fired with the MP 5 type weapons as with the service revolvers.
When the police use submachine guns, only single fire is permitted, bursts of fire, i.e. salvos, are prohibited.
According to information from security circles, there is nothing to suggest an illegal burst of fire.
In addition, the officer is said to have deliberately used the MP because it could be used more precisely than the police revolvers.
However, the shooter did not manage to use precision.
On the contrary, he hit D. extensively in the stomach, jaw, forearm and twice on the shoulder.
A sixth shot missed the youth.
"There are still technical and toxicological reports pending, and the investigations will certainly take three weeks," said Dombert.
As is usual in deadly police operations, the shooter, a 29-year-old officer, is being investigated on initial suspicion of bodily harm resulting in death.
Ultimately, it is a matter of clarifying whether the officer shot in self-defense or as an emergency aid, according to Dombert - and was alluding to the fact that anyone can ward off an illegal attack with any weapon.