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After the racist attack: crime scene in Hanau on February 20, 2020
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
Around a year after the racist attack in Hanau, Hesse's Interior Minister Peter Beuth admitted that there were problems with the emergency call that night.
"It is correct that the police station could only receive a limited number of calls that night," said the CDU politician in Wiesbaden.
The total emergency call volume for the Hanau police station amounts to an average of 80 calls a day.
"It was not technically possible to forward many emergency calls that came in at the same time," said Beuth.
However, he promised an improvement in emergency call forwarding.
With the move of the Southeast Hesse police headquarters to the new office, all police emergency calls in the area of responsibility would be centralized in one control center.
This modernization was initiated in the past, but has not yet been completed due to structural and technical requirements.
Public prosecutor's office checks poorly manned emergency number
Relatives of the victims had complained that the police in Hanau had been understaffed at the time of the crime and that emergency calls had therefore come to nothing.
The Hanau public prosecutor's office initiated an investigation on Thursday.
The authority had announced that it was about the allegation that the police emergency number could not be reached on the day of the attack.
Beuth also spoke about the actions of the emergency services after the fact.
"As far as I know, the Hessian police acted immediately after receiving the first emergency calls and were at the first crime scene on Heumarkt within just one or two minutes," he said.
"The police arrived at the scene of the crime in Hanau-Kesselstadt three to four minutes after the report was made by emergency call."
The Ministry of the Interior also rejected the allegation that an emergency exit door of the bar had been locked at the time of the crime on police instructions.
The police last informed the responsible trade office in 2017 that the emergency exit had been locked illegally at the time of a restaurant inspection at the time.
The police did not give any instructions to block the escape route.
On February 19, 2020, 43-year-old Tobias Rathjen shot nine people with foreign roots in Hanau.
Previously, the man had posted pamphlets and videos with conspiracy stories and racist views on the Internet.
After the fact, he is also said to have killed his mother before killing himself.
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bbr / AFP / dpa