Femicide: Recreational hunter shoots wife in the head
A recreational hunter in Upper Austria shoots his 42-year-old wife with a pistol. The couple's five children were present in the house.
While a mother of five sat unsuspectingly in the dining room, the licensed hunter allegedly aimed his pistol at the back of her head and pulled the trigger.
The scenes at the femicide in the house in the Upper Austrian municipality of Weissenkirchen im Attergau must have been horrific: the couple has five children aged between seven and 18, who were present during the deadly act, Austrian media report.
Fatal shot at the dining table
On 8 January 2022 at around 2:45 p.m., a relationship dispute apparently smouldering for years between the married couple Daniel (46) and Simone S. (42) erupts in a terrible explosion of violence. The findings of the investigation so far: the former forester took his registered Glock 17 and shot his wife, who was sitting at the dining table, in the back of the head. He then called the police emergency line and allowed himself to be arrested without resistance.
When emergency responders arrived, Simone S. was still showing signs of life. She was airlifted by rescue helicopter to Kepler University Hospital in Linz, where doctors lost the fight for her life at 6:51 p.m. During his interrogation, the German-born man made a full confession. He cited ongoing conflicts as his motive. He is being held in the Wels correctional facility. At the scene, police secured three rifles in addition to the murder weapon — all of which the man had legally owned as a licensed hunter.
IG Wild beim Wild demands psychological assessments
For years, IG Wild beim Wild has been calling for mandatory medical-psychological assessments for recreational hunters, modelled on the Dutch system, as well as an upper age limit. This case once again highlights the dangers posed by the easy availability of firearms among recreational hunters.
The shock in the twelve-house village of Egg is profound. The couple had purchased a plot of land there in 2015 and had a prefabricated house erected, moving in during 2016. Farmer Josef R. (88) was friends with Daniel S.: “He comes from northern Germany, originally trained as a gunsmith and then switched careers because there was no future in it.”
Yet it was clearly apparent that things were turbulent behind the facade of a happy family: the couple had repeatedly screamed at each other. Daniel S.’s evening ritual: he would come home, sit in the boot of his car, listen to music, and drink alcohol.
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.
