Hobby hunter shoots farmer on tractor
During a driven hunt in Blankenheim, an 82-year-old farmer is fatally shot. The Aachen public prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident as a hunting accident.
82-year-old fatally injured
According to information from the Bonn police an 82-year-old farmer was fatally injured by a gunshot near Blankenheim-Mülheim.
As a police spokesperson reported, the farmer was travelling on Friday, 3 November 2023, on a tractor with a trailer load of wood in the area of the Mülheimer Mühle. «He sustained a fatal gunshot wound,» said the police officer.
The Bonn police have opened a homicide investigation. Until Friday evening, the criminal investigation department was working around the location where he was found.
Fatal shot during a driven hunt
The elderly man is reported to have been slumped behind the wheel of his tractor. Initially, a heart attack was suspected until the gunshot wound was discovered. A piece of killed game is also said to have been found nearby. According to police, a driven hunt was taking place in the adjacent woodland area at the same time as the Blankenheim farmer was working. A driven hunt is a special form of the animal-cruel battue hunt.
The Aachen public prosecutor’s office has also opened an investigation, according to press spokesperson Katja Schlenkermann-Pitts. «We currently assume that this is a tragic hunting accident» said the senior public prosecutor.
No warning signs, no safety
«This is a route where everyone from the area walks their dogs,» complained a local resident. There had been no signage to be seen anywhere. A group of children from the Mülheim kindergarten had even been making their way through the nature reserve into the forest.
Recreational hunting regularly claims human lives. Wild beim Wild documents hunting accidents and crimes related to recreational hunting systematically.
Further articles
More recent hunting accidents and documented criminal offences involving hobby hunters can be found here: Chronicle of hunting accidents and criminal offences on the abolition of hunting as well as in the Chronicle of hunting accidents in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at PETA.
