As of: March 1, 2024, 1:50 p.m
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Forensics work behind a police cordon at the Von Düring barracks in the city of Rotenburg (Wümme).
© Sina Schuldt/dpa
At night, several shots were fired in two communities in Lower Saxony.
Four people die.
The investigators are focusing on a soldier.
What could have been the motive?
Scheeßel/Bothel - The sun is shining, birds are chirping and the first spring flowers are sprouting in the garden in front of the brick house in Scheeßel, Lower Saxony.
There are a few balls on the lawn, next to a swing and a large trampoline.
An idyll - if it weren't for the police tape and a police car with flashing lights in the courtyard entrance.
Unbelievable scenes must have taken place in the family home on Friday night.
In the end four people are dead.
In the middle of the night, around half past three on Friday morning, his parents were startled awake from their sleep, says a neighbor.
Several shots were fired.
“When you hear something like that, you think it’s really far away,” says the 22-year-old.
"But then looking out the window when it's two meters away from you - that's of course a completely different feeling."
The neighboring house - a crime scene?
Shots were also fired in Bothel, around nine kilometers away - also in the Rotenburg (Wümme) district.
A Bundeswehr soldier is said to have taken up arms and four people lost their lives.
The Rotenburg police and the Verden public prosecutor's office said there was also a child among the dead.
How old the victims were and what their relationship was to each other - until Friday afternoon there was only speculation.
“A motive in the family environment cannot be ruled out,” the investigators simply said.
A completely different picture emerged on Friday in the Von Düring barracks in Rotenburg, where, among others, the 91st Jäger Battalion is stationed.
In a visitor parking lot in front of the barracks, investigators are examining a black car for traces, as a dpa reporter observed.
The suspect is said to have driven there in the car early in the morning, a police spokesman reports.
He got out, walked up to the guard and turned himself in.
The police arrested the 32-year-old a short time later.
There is a Molotov cocktail in the driver's door of his car, and there is cartridge ammunition in the trunk next to a Bundeswehr backpack.
What did the soldier intend to do with it?
That still has to be found out, says a police spokesman.
The investigators are also checking whether the murder weapon came from the Bundeswehr.
However, according to dpa information, no weapon is missing from the Bundeswehr in this context.
The uncertainty is difficult for the neighbors to bear.
Who died in the house next door?
“A shot like that with a sharp weapon is never just a slight scratch,” ponders the 22-year-old.
In the first few hours he received hundreds of messages and he could hardly think of anything else.
What was the background to the crime?
What would have happened if he or other neighbors had been outside at the time?
“These are all things that you don’t even want to imagine.” dpa