Image: VOLKER Weihbold
At the regional court in Salzburg, a 34-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years of unconditional imprisonment on Tuesday after being accused of murdering his neighbor. He is said to have killed the 33-year-old on April 6, 2022 in a residential building in the city of Salzburg with several powerful knife wounds. The accused initially said he did not know how that happened and referred to gaps in his memory. After consultation with the defense attorney, he made a confession.
The act in the early hours of the morning is said to have been preceded by a dispute between the two men, who, according to the accused, have known each other since their secondary school days. The dead person lived in a garconniere of the apartment building in the Parsch district. That’s where the conflict took place. The evening before, the accused had argued with his partner that he was in a bad mental state, the prosecutor said. That night, the 34-year-old took a taxi to the later victim, who also paid the taxi bill. The chauffeur heard the friend say to the accused, “don’t worry, everything will be fine”.
Drank together
In the 33-year-old’s apartment, the two men drank “a few cans of beer,” the prosecutor continued. As a court report revealed, the accused was also under the influence of considerable drugs and medication. Because the drug-addicted Austrian was used to drugs according to the expert, he was certified sane at the time of the crime.
The interrogation of the accused by the chairman of the jury, Bettina Maxones-Kurkowski, was initially somewhat difficult. The judge initially did not see a confession by the man in the descriptions of the 34-year-old, as the defender had announced in the opening speech, as she explained. The Austrian had explained that his friend had started scolding because he wanted to smoke a joint. The friend then took a knife. The dispute then escalated.
The defendant said he did not know why he himself got angry and furious. He didn’t want to hurt or kill his friend. “I don’t know how it happened,” the man referred to “memory gaps” because of his drug and alcohol use. “Under normal circumstances, it certainly wouldn’t have happened.” He did not name a motive.
stab wounds to the upper body
The victim had five stab wounds to his upper body, including one stab wound to his back. “The man bled to death,” said the prosecutor. The accused admitted that he also hit his friend with a cordless screwdriver. He himself had a stab wound to his lip. Today he said that his friend inflicted the wound on him. In his first police interrogation, he explained that the 33-year-old wanted to do something to himself and that he wanted to prevent him from doing so.
After the crime, the accused called emergency services. Because his statements did not match the situation at the scene of the crime, he was arrested on suspicion of murder. The officers secured a knife in the garconniere. The suspect’s DNA was found on the blade and handle of the knife and also on the cordless screwdriver.
After the 34-year-old said in the trial, “why should I say it’s my fault if I didn’t mean to kill him,” the presiding judge warned that this was not a confession. After a 15-minute consultation with his defense attorney Kurt Jelinek, he said: “He pleads guilty. He regrets that it happened. He didn’t plan it. It developed according to the situation.”
Defendant apologizes to victim’s mother
The accused himself added that he apologized “with all his heart” to the victim’s mother. He then exercised his rights of defense and gave no further information. Before that he had talked about his difficult childhood, he spoke of violence in his family of Turkish origin. He smoked a joint for the first time when he was 12 and took cocaine for the first time when he was 16. “I wasn’t strong enough to get off drug addiction.” At the beginning of the trial, the judge also mentioned the psychiatric history of the 34-year-old and his nine previous convictions.
The judgment is therefore not final because the public prosecutor has not made any statement. The defense attorney waived an appeal. The mother of the deceased, represented by victim lawyer Stefan Rieder, and four other relatives were each awarded 40,000 euros in compensation for pain and suffering.
Source: Nachrichten
