Was the escape door in the Arena Bar in Hanau actually locked on the night of the attack on February 19, 2020?

Could the victims of the racially motivated assassin, who killed nine people that evening, otherwise have escaped through this door?

The Hanau public prosecutor's office followed up on this question with detailed investigations into the exact course of events, but there will not be a final answer.

As the public prosecutor announced on Thursday, the proceedings were "due to insufficient suspicion of a criminal offense" being discontinued.

Luise Glaser-Lotz

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Kinzig district.

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Two survivors of the attack and three relatives of one of the two men killed in the arena bar had filed a complaint.

According to the public prosecutor, the allegation against unknown persons was essentially negligent manslaughter through omission.

The applicants stated that the emergency exit was locked from the inside.

In addition, there were indications that police officers knew about the locked emergency exit and that it was even closed on their instructions to prevent people from escaping during drug controls.

Numerous contradictions

The public prosecutor questioned former employees of the Arena Bar and guests based on the complaint and evaluated surveillance videos. She also consulted investigations by the Hessian State Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden, as well as the bar's commercial files and construction documents. A criminally relevant misconduct had not been determined, was the result.

During their investigation, the public prosecutor encountered numerous contradictions, which are presented in a 40-page press release. According to some witnesses, the door was usually not locked from the inside. Above all, it was used to take the garbage outside. A key was only necessary to get back into the bar from the outside. According to other respondents, the door was mostly locked. It is also possible that the door was so stiff that one could have thought it was closed. According to the public prosecutor's office, the “closure of the emergency exit on the night of the crime” could not be clarified with sufficient certainty.

According to the investigators' findings, the accusation that police officers or employees of the public order office ordered or accepted the closing of the emergency exit was not substantiated by concrete evidence. Another accusation by the advertisers that the escape route was blocked by structural changes - meaning a subsequently built-in storage room - from the back bar area of ​​the bar to the emergency exit, does not see the public prosecutor as given. According to the building authority, the storage room behind the counter, where bar guests sought refuge, was not objectionable. In addition, it is by no means certain that victims could have reached the escape door unscathed at all. The assassin would probably have shot them in the back.