On April 6, 2007, a then 23-year-old Russian citizen of Chechen origin was shot dead in the parking lot of an asylum center with a handgun. According to the state police headquarters in St. Pölten on Thursday, the accused was a 29-year-old, also Chechen.
The man is clearly described by witness statements as the direct shooter and heavily incriminated. The reason for the shots is said to be the injured honor of the accused, who had been inferior to the victim in multiple physical altercations and could not accept this, the police reported. The public prosecutor’s office in Wiener Neustadt issued a national and European arrest order.
The man, who is now in his mid-forties, has obviously been in his home country for a long time. He was already a suspect in 2007 and turned himself in to the Salzburg State Criminal Police Office on May 20th. The Chechen was taken to Wiener Neustadt Prison. At the time, he denied any involvement in the crime in Helenental. Because there were no traces at the crime scene that would have pointed to the man, he was released for lack of evidence, said Roland Scherscher, head of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counter-Terrorism (LVT) Lower Austria, on Thursday at the APA request.
The file was reviewed by LVT officials in early 2022. According to the State Police Directorate, the trigger for the resumption of the investigations by the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Austria was the clarification of the Gerasdorf murder case in 2020.
In the late evening of April 6, 2007, the victim was transported to Baden Hospital in a private car. However, there was no more help for the man. Police dogs and a helicopter were also used in the search for the deadly shots. According to the information at the time, the young Chechen was hit by two of the three projectiles fired at him – in the heart and in a thigh. Two of the more than 40 residents of the refugee accommodation found the 23-year-old in the parking lot.
Source: Nachrichten
