Recreational hunter in terminal stage shoots at police
Alarm in Saarland: A police officer was injured by gunshots during an operation.
During a police operation in Saarland, a recreational hunter reportedly fired shots from an open window, hitting a police officer.
At around 8:30 a.m., the weapons authority launched an operation at a residential building on Wilhelmstrasse in the Klarenthal district of Saarbrücken. The focus: a 67-year-old resident.
Operations of this kind routinely involve the SEK (special operations unit). The situation escalated, and an SEK officer was seriously but not life-threateningly injured. As the shooter remained inside the building, police called in additional forces, including a negotiation unit.
The shooter then barricaded himself in his apartment. Police subsequently stormed the apartment and found the killer's body inside.
A female police officer was also injured by flying shards of glass.
According to information from Bild the man is said to have been a recreational hunter. Because the authorities had expressed doubts about his reliability, they paid him a visit. It appears the man was in possession of more than 20 firearms, some of which the officers intended to confiscate. The dispute is said to have erupted as a result. Authorities had urged local residents to stay away from the area and remain in their homes.
The 67-year-old was already known to the authorities and police and had previously “come to their attention in connection with police and firearms law matters.” According to the administrative court in Saarlouis, the man had violations of the Weapons Act and the War Weapons Control Act on record, as well as offences involving violence and threats.
More on this in the dossier: Psychology of Hunting
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
