BERLIN | Two young police officers were shot dead on Monday during a roadside check in southwestern Germany, triggering a vast search operation which resulted in the arrest of suspects at the end of the day whose motive remains to be determined.
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Investigators arrested two men, ages 38 and 32, in two separate raids.
The oldest had been targeted since mid-afternoon by a search warrant from the police and the prosecution.
Identified as Andreas Johannes Schmitt, brown hair and fine beard, he resides in Saarland, a region neighboring the scene of the murder, according to the authorities. He was arrested about 8 kilometers from his home.
The other suspect was arrested without resistance, according to the investigation services, which did not give more details at this stage.
The two officers, a 29-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, were shot dead around 4:20 a.m. (0320 GMT) on a country road near Kusel, a town near Kaiserslautern in the regional state of Rhineland-Palatinate. (west), neighbor of the Land of Sarre.
This crime caused amazement in Germany where the murders of police officers are relatively rare: the Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, evoked an “execution”.
The police said they did not know the motives of the killer or killers and the circumstances of the murders, perpetrated in a rural area of forests and grasslands, remain to be clarified.
Wireless contacts
The uniformed police were in an unmarked vehicle on a country road in the middle of the night.
According to the daily website Picture, the police were shot in the head by poachers. They sent a radio message shortly before the tragedy indicating that they had stopped a suspicious vehicle carrying dead game in the trunk.
“Colleagues reported that shots had been fired,” West Palatinate police spokesman Bernhard Christian Erfort told media.
“Then we lost radio contact (…) The intervention forces then went to the scene and found the colleagues, one injured, the other dead”, he added without confirming information on possible poachers.
The young policewoman did not even have time to draw her weapon, continued Picture citing sources familiar with the investigation. The other officer fired shots before being injured and succumbing to his wounds shortly afterwards.
The 24-year-old officer was training as a commissioner, according to the regional interior ministry.
The leader of the Rhineland-Palatinate region, Marlu Dreyer, said she was “deeply upset” by this “appalling act”, while the regional Minister of the Interior, Roger Lewentz, insisted on “the great brutality” with which both victims were killed.
Police operations have mobilized helicopters, sniffer dogs and special police forces since the early hours of the day.