At the weekend, two men were killed in police operations in Lübeck and Rhineland-Palatinate. The background of the missions are still unclear.
In Hoppstädt, Rhineland-Palatinate, police shot and killed a man armed with an ax. The police headquarters Trier said a witness had alarmed the police late Saturday afternoon, because she had noticed an apathetic-looking man at a sports center in Hoppstädten-Weiersbach, who threatened a man and hit him with an ax on the vehicle. The police then initiated a search. It also special forces, the Federal Police and a police helicopter were used.
A few hours later, another witness reportedly reported seeing a man with an ax running across a field towards tennis courts. There the man met the police. He had been fatally injured in a firearm operation. The identity of the man and the background of the incident are still unclear, it said.
Another police headquarters and the prosecutor Bad Kreuznach had therefore taken over the investigation of the incident.
Another dead after firefight in Lübeck
In Lübeck, a 52-year-old died apparently after a shootout with the police, the investigators. A father had called the police in the afternoon after he and his daughter in the city park had been approached by a threatening-looking man. Shortly afterwards, several shots were fired in the city park, police said.
According to the current state of investigation is to assume a firefight between police officers and this man. The man from the Segeberg district was found lying on the ground in a street adjacent to the park. "He died in the process," the police wrote in their message.
Information about how exactly the police operations were, should give the further investigation.
Policemen shot dead eleven people in Germany last year, as figures from the German Police College in Münster show. For 2017, the college had scored 14 more cases of deadly firearms use.
