At the Regional Court of the German city of Trier, on Tuesday, August 16, the trial of the case of deliberate running over in a pedestrian zone, committed in December 2020, ended. A 52-year-old man was sentenced to the maximum sentence of imprisonment life for multiple murders and attempted murder.

The court also established a special gravity of guilt and ordered the man to be sent for compulsory treatment to a closed psychiatric hospital. At the same time, the court found it proved that the accused deliberately entered the pedestrian zone in an all-terrain vehicle at high speed to kill or injure as many people as possible.

Five victims and dozens injured

As a result of the collision, a two-month-old child, her 45-year-old father, as well as women aged 25, 52 and 73 died. Many bystanders were injured, 14 of them seriously. About 300 witnesses to the crime needed the help of psychologists. Prosecutors charged the hit-and-run driver with killing five people and attempted murder on 18 other counts, as well as causing serious bodily harm.

The process began on August 19, 2021. During almost 40 meetings, dozens of witnesses were interviewed who spoke of traumatic experiences. The defendant remained silent throughout the trial. According to the results of a psychiatric examination, he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia accompanied by bizarre hallucinations. According to the prosecution, at the time of the crime, the man – an unemployed person from Trier, a single German citizen without permanent residence – was very disappointed in the circumstances of his life.

Crime in the center of Trier

On December 1, 2020, an off-road vehicle entered the pedestrian zone of Trier, near the Basilica of Constantine, and crossed the Hauptmarkt towards the old gates of the Porta Nigra, moving in a zigzag and making “random” collisions. with pedestrians. During the arrest, the driver resisted.

According to police, at the time of the crime, the man was in a state of intoxication, 1.4 ppm of alcohol was found in his blood. At that time, he didn’t have a permanent place of residence, he had spent the previous days in his car. According to Wolfram Leibe, mayor of Trier, it was the most tragic day in the city since the Second World War.