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Destroyed windshield of the train (archive picture): The train driver is said to have planned the alleged attack himself
Photo: Hessische Landesbahn / dpa
The appeal process against a train driver in the so-called manhole cover case before the Siegen district court has surprisingly been overturned because of the defendant's death.
"The defendant died yesterday in Lünen," the court announced on Tuesday when the trial was supposed to begin after the man's appeal.
A spokeswoman said that the news of the death took one by surprise.
A death investigation was initiated at the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund.
The man had died, further information could not be given about the case, said a spokesman for the authorities.
The Siegen district court should deal with the case after the train driver appealed against the first-instance ruling from October 2020.
Train driver sentenced to prison
The district court in Bad Berleburg in Siegerland had sentenced him to a prison term of one year and nine months without parole.
The judges saw it as proven that in April 2019 he himself planned an attack on a Hessian State Railroad train he was running and installed two manhole covers on a bridge for this purpose.
The incident at Siegen near the border between North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse caused a stir.
The two heavy manhole covers had crashed into the windshield of the train.
The train driver on the train, which was still unoccupied early in the morning, was unharmed.
After a murder attack against him had not been ruled out, suspicion fell on the train driver himself in the course of the investigation. Investigators found his DNA traces on manhole covers and ropes.
The judgment was also based on expert opinions on fiber traces that were assigned to the then 50-year-old.
The defendant had denied the allegations.
ptz / dpa
