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A 16-year-old Senegalese died behind this fence on August 8 during a police operation
Photo: Gregor Bauernfeind / dpa
In the case of 16-year-old Senegalese Mouhamed D., who was killed by police bullets on August 8, the investigations into some of the police officers involved in the operation are expanding.
A witness to the crime stated that, contrary to previous reports, D. was not only shot at with a submachine gun.
According to the witness, the commander also shot the 16-year-old.
According to Interior Minister Herbert Reul in the state parliament's Interior Committee, the head of operations' weapon had been confiscated and is now to be examined for traces.
According to a report by the state Ministry of Justice, this was done out of “extreme caution”.
So far, the investigators assume that the shots were fired from the submachine gun of a young police officer who had been assigned as a security shooter.
The houses of the five accused officers were also searched on September 14, and the five police officers' mobile phones were confiscated "because there was a reasonable assumption" "that the accused exchanged information via SMS or Whatsapp".
The police officers are also said to have met two days after the shooting for a good one-hour "service meeting with the participation of the police chief".
It can be assumed that the course of the mission was also discussed.
The officials are being investigated for dangerous bodily harm resulting in death in office, incitement to it or aiding and abetting.
Mouhamed D. came to Germany in April 2022 and to Dortmund a week before the police operation.
He suffered from a traumatic stress disorder and was treated in a child and adolescent psychiatric ward the day before the crime because of a depressive episode.
At 4:25 p.m. on Monday, a supervisor at the youth welfare facility where D. lived called the police because D. was holding a knife to his stomach in the locked courtyard and was said not to have been able to speak.
The police gathered around 4.30 p.m. in front of the youth welfare facility, 17 minutes later six shots were fired.
D. died around 6 p.m. in a nearby hospital.
After the crime, there were several demonstrations against police violence in Dortmund.
Among other things, it was criticized that no officer had switched on a body camera and that there was no video material of the event.
On the other hand, the emergency call from the supervisor was recorded, according to information from the Ministry of Justice up to the time the 16-year-old was shot.
In the past, the investigating senior public prosecutor, Carsten Dombert, had questioned the proportionality of the operation, and Interior Minister Herbert Reul had also expressed doubts about the correct course of the police operation.
tgk
