Earlier this year, a 24-year-old police cadet and a 29-year-old senior officer were shot and killed during a traffic stop on a district road in Rhineland-Palatinate near the district town of Kusel.
The cold-blooded recreational hunter Andreas S. (39) must now spend life in prison!
Poaching with fatal consequences
The two recreational hunters are said to have poachers who were caught in the police check. Exactly how the officers became aware of the two remains unclear. The loading area of their van allegedly contained numerous killed wild animals, said chief prosecutor Stefan Orthen.
The Kaiserslautern Regional Court convicted the poacher of double murder of police cadet Yasmin B. and senior officer Alexander K. on 31 January 2022. The two had caught Andreas S. and his accomplice Florian V. at night during illegal recreational hunting activities.
Andreas S. shot the uniformed police officers with a hunting rifle and a shotgun, according to the judges' conviction, in order to cover up the act, writes Bild.de.
He then fled with Florian V. to Sulzbach in the Saarland, where the court refrained from punishment in view of his contribution to solving the murders. There, Andreas S. calmly butchered the poached animals. When a special operations unit arrested him, he was still wearing his blood-soaked butcher's apron.
Life imprisonment for double murder
The insolvent police killer — he had driven an inherited bakery chain into the ground and had around two million euros in debt — denied the charges until the very end.
Andreas S. and his defence lawyers will likely not accept the verdict and will file an appeal.
«It is good that the court has delivered its verdict. However, this cannot alleviate the immeasurable suffering of the victims' families. Two people are missing. My thoughts are with the bereaved and the members of our police family. The large number of condolences has shown how deeply this act — as brutal as it was senseless — has moved people», said Interior Minister Ebling.
Following the act, a wave of profound grief and mourning swept through the Rhineland-Palatinate police force, the state, and the entire federal territory. Well over 20’000 messages reached the Rhineland-Palatinate police by post, by email, or via social media.
«This enormous outpouring of sympathy from the public provided great comfort during this difficult time. At the same time, it is also a sign that the vast majority of citizens not only stand behind the police, but are also by their side in their darkest hour», emphasized Dreyer and Ebling.
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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.
