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The tragic accident happened in the training rooms of the Styrian State Police Headquarters
Photo: Erwin Scheriau / picture alliance/dpa/APA
A fatal accident occurred during an exercise in the Styrian state police headquarters on Wednesday.
As the public prosecutor's office in Graz announced on Thursday, a 39-year-old trainer allegedly accidentally used the wrong weapon - instead of the harmless practice pistol, he caught the loaded service weapon.
A shot was fired from a short distance and hit the back of a police colleague.
Rescue efforts were unsuccessful, the 27-year-old succumbed to the gunshot wound on the spot.
The projectile hit a vital vein, prosecutors said.
"I am deeply affected by the tragic accident and the death of my young colleague," the Austrian courier quoted the state police director Gerald Ortner as saying.
According to the newspaper, the 27-year-old is said to have just completed his training and spontaneously decided to take part in the training on Wednesday evening.
Prosecutors are investigating grossly negligent homicide
The exercise group practiced the search for a dangerous perpetrator in Graz.
As the public prosecutor announced, the trainer testified that he had handed out so-called red weapons to the participants in the mission simulation.
A red gun looks like a service weapon, but cannot fire ammunition.
After handing it out, he forgot that he was still carrying his loaded gun in his holster.
The 39-year-old wanted to demonstrate that one of the officers was in a vulnerable position, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger.
The public prosecutor's office is now investigating the trainer for grossly negligent homicide.
However, one assumes that it was an accident, according to a spokesman for the judicial authority.
According to the previous investigations and the statements of the trainer, there is no doubt that it was an accident.
It is not the first accident of this kind. In 2019 there was a similar accident in Cologne: Here, too, an exercise with red weapons preceded it, a 23-year-old police officer shot his colleague of the same age.
ves/dpa
