In the case of the killed 14-year-old boy from Wunstorf in Lower Saxony, blunt force trauma is the cause of death. “This is the result of the autopsy report,” said Can Türkay, spokesman for the Hanover public prosecutor’s office, on Friday. On Thursday, the responsible juvenile court judge ordered the suspect of the same age to be held in custody because the murder characteristic of insidiousness – as requested – was seen.
The 14-year-old victim was unsuspecting and defenseless, the investigators explained their point of view. The suspect was taken to the Hamelin Juvenile Institution. However, many questions remain unanswered in this case. The motive for the crime is unclear.
After a search operation lasting several hours, the body of the previously missing 14-year-old boy was found in the village of Blumenau on Wednesday. As part of the investigation, a friend of the boy’s age told the police that he had killed him, it said. The 14-year-old was arrested on suspicion of a crime.
The boy’s father had reported his son missing on Tuesday evening because he had not returned home from a meeting with a 14-year-old from Wunstorf. The police initially assumed a missing person until the boy’s friend, the same age, said he had killed and hidden him.
As reported by Norddeutscher Rundfunk, citing investigators, the suspect is said to have planned the crime over several months and used a stone. The “Bild” also reported on a long preparation and a stone as a murder weapon. The public prosecutor’s office in Hanover initially gave no information on this or other details. According to the investigators, both the victim and the suspect are German nationals.
Hanover’s Bishop Ralf Meister expressed his sympathy on Wednesday evening. His thoughts and prayers are with the family of the dead teenager and his school community, it said in a statement. A funeral service is planned for Friday at the school where the youth died. According to the school management, pastors looked after the students. Everyone was “horrified, stunned and infinitely sad”.
The case also caused horror beyond the small town and reminded many people of an act in Salzgitter, where 15-year-old Anastasia was killed last summer. A 14-year-old has been on trial in Braunschweig for a few weeks because he and a classmate who was 13 at the time of the crime – and was therefore not under criminal responsibility – are said to have insidiously murdered the teenager.
Despite the often great emotionality in such cases, the criminologist Klaus Boers from the University of Münster pointed out that the number of homicides in Germany had been falling for years. This also applies to violence by young people and adolescents. The police crime statistics show that serious violent crimes involving underage suspects are on the decline nationwide. According to evaluations by the German Youth Institute (DJI), the number of suspects in the 14 to under 18 age group halved between 2008 and 2021.
