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Regional court in Bochum (archive image)
Photo: Bernd Thissen/ dpa
The trial of an attempted robbery in a Bochum arcade ended with the accused being acquitted.
The 56-year-old was accused of hitting a cashier on the head with a hammer on February 27, 1991, causing life-threatening injuries.
The loot is said to have amounted to a good 4,000 Deutschmarks.
The main indication of the perpetrator of the accused was a fingerprint secured at the scene of the crime.
According to the judgment of the Bochum district court, this trace was not sufficient for a conviction.
"The fingerprint was not reliable enough to be convinced that the accused was the perpetrator," said judge Josef Große Feldhaus in the verdict.
Defendant remained silent at trial
For a long time, the police were groping in the dark during their investigation.
It was only with new digital forensic technology that the fingerprint could finally be assigned to the suspect, as reported by the WDR, among others.
The man was then arrested in Bremerhaven last November.
He had worked on a cruise ship that was just coming into port.
During the trial, the accused remained silent on the allegations.
Prosecutors had requested four and a half years in prison for attempted murder.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The arcade supervisor had suffered serious head injuries in the act.
According to prosecutors, the woman suffered from anxiety and depression until her death in 2012.
wit/dpa