Two men sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for shots fired at police
Two young men have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms by the Ansbach regional court after firing shots at police officers. The wild chase ended after 20 minutes in a traffic accident.
Ansbach regional court sentences two men for shots fired at special operations unit
According to sueddeutsche.de, the Ansbach regional court has sentenced two young men, aged 24 and 25, to prison sentences of seven and a half years each. After five days of hearings, the court determined it as proven that both were surprised along with a third fugitive in a holiday flat by special operations unit officers from the police. During the subsequent flight, they fired at the police officers.
On 27 January, officers pursued the two men in their Mercedes for more than 20 minutes. During the breakneck drive through towns in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, the car at times reached speeds well over 100 kilometres per hour. One of the men fired four times at police from the vehicle. The presiding judge Matthias Held stated that the car was to be equated almost with a firearm as a weapon.
The pursuit ended when the Mercedes collided with an uninvolved vehicle at a roundabout and came to a halt. Police officers arrested the two men immediately afterwards. Officers found 580 grammes of cannabis in the getaway vehicle.
The gunman received a prison sentence of seven years and six months for assault on law enforcement officers. The second man was also sentenced to seven and a half years in prison – amongst other things for endangering traffic and unlawful armed drug dealing.
The defendants claimed they did not know it was a police vehicle. They said they felt threatened and wanted to defend themselves. A 17-second mobile phone video from a witness showed no blue light and was inaudible, but could not definitively clarify whether police markings were visible.
Although the court found intent to kill, it refrained from a conviction for attempted murder, as the prosecution had demanded in its closing argument. The verdicts are not final – the defence is preparing to appeal. A further investigation by the Nuremberg-Fürth state prosecutor's office is looking into possible connections between the men and the Turkish mafia gang "Daltons" and drug dealing, but this was not the subject of the Ansbach trial.
Source: Die Zeit Kriminalität