List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany

Listed below are people killed by nonmilitary law enforcement officers in Germany, whether in the line of duty or not, and regardless of reason or method. Inclusion in the lists implies neither wrongdoing nor justification on the part of the person killed or the officer involved. The listing merely documents the occurrence of a death. The list below is not complete.

Statistics

The numbers before 1978 can not directly compared to the later numbers. The list was compiled 1997 for the first time, and the legal limit to keep records is 20 years. So some files may have been destroyed. The numbers do not include suicide.

Cases

2015

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2015-03-11	N.N.	48	Memmingen	Bavaria	The police wanted to arrest the man who was sentenced to one year in prison. When the six officers approached him, he drew a knife. Through the shot, the man suffered life-threatening injuries to the trunk and died later in hospital.[16]
2015-09-17	Rafik Yousef	41	Spandau	Berlin	Police were called by citizens who reported a “madman with a knife”. As the first police officer to arrive at the scene emerged from her vehicle, Yousef attacked, stabbing her in the neck just above her protective vest. Her partner immediately drew his gun and shot the knife-wielding man four times.

2014

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2014-07-25	B., André	33	Burghausen	Bavaria	Two plainclothes police officers tried to arrest a convicted cannabis dealer near his flat. The man attempted to flee from the policemen and was shot in the back of the head.[17]

2013

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2013-06-28	F., Manuel	31	Berlin	Berlin	A man claimed to be mentally ill stripped off his clothes, climbed naked into a fountain, brandished a knife and cut himself. After police arrived at the scene to arrest the man, he walked towards one of the officers with the knife drawn. When the man did not stop after being requested to, the officer fired one shot, killing him.[18]
2013-06-07	N.N.	71	Starnberg	Bavaria	A mentally ill man drew a knife in front of a police station; he was then shot seven times by three police officers.[19]

2012

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2012-10-06	Conrad, André	50	Berlin	Berlin	A man had been reported to walk around with a knife and an axe. He has been claimed to have attacked police officers. According to the police, he ignored all commands and did not respond to mace. He was then shot multiple times, and died two weeks later.[20]
2012-08-01	N.N.	51	Elsfleth	Lower Saxony	A man claimed to be mentally ill was visited by the social-psychiatric service of the district (German: Sozialpsychiatrischer Dienst), which requested police support. It is claimed that when the door was opened, the man immediately attacked one of the two police officers. The other officer is said to have fired multiple shots, mortally wounding the man.[21] Investigations against the shooter are pending.[22]
2012-05-07	N.N.	47	Aichach	Bavaria	Perpetrator shot after attacking his neighbor and responding police officers with an axe.[23]
2012-02-26	N.N.	57	Maintal-Bischofsheim	Hesse	A man was claimed to be throwing bottles from his flat onto the street and causing a disturbance. Police forced entry into the apartment of the man, who is said to have threatened the officers with knives. Police fired several shots, killing the man. The investigation by the prosecutor against the officers was dropped.[24]

2011

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2011-10-26	N.N.	47	Cuxhaven	Lower Saxony	A man who was claimed to have "rampaged", attacked and threatened people in an administration building in the District of Cuxhaven was shot by one of the responding officers. The killed person is claimed to have approached the police with an iron bar. The prosecutor dropped the investigations against the 25-year-old police officer.[25]
2011-08-24	H., Andrea	53	Berlin	Berlin	Andrea H., who was claimed to be mentally ill, was supposed to be compulsorily committed to a psychiatric hospital. It is claimed that she fought against this using a knife and injuring an officer, after which a colleague of the injured officer shot her.[26]
2011-05-19	Schwundeck, Christy	39	Frankfurt	Hesse	Christy Schwundeck, a Nigerian-born, German-naturalized woman whose marriage had broken up and who had a history of depression, was rejected monetary assistance in Frankfurt Jobcenter and was requested to leave. She refused and the police was called in. Two officers, a 30-year-old male and a 28-year-old female, were confronted by the woman, who injured the male officer with a machete. The female officer pointed her service pistol at Christy Schwundeck and, after several verbal warnings and a threatening movement by the suspect towards the officer, the latter shot her. Christy Schwundeck died later in hospital. The case against the female officer has been dropped in spite of a formal request by Christy Schwundeck's relatives to re-open it.[27]

2010

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2010-12-30		49	München	Bavaria	A woman threatened a police officer with a knife. After she did not react to pepper spray, the officer fired a shot, killing her.[28]
2010-12-10	N.N.	40	Karlsruhe	Baden-Württemberg	After a successful bank robbery at a Volksbank the so called "gentlemen robbers" opened fire on the arriving police. During the following shoot-out with the police, the male robber from Czech Republic was killed by the police while his 38 years old wife shot herself.[29][30]
2010-09-19	R., Sabine	41	Lörrach	Baden-Württemberg	During the 2010 Lörrach hospital shooting 41-year-old lawyer Sabine R. killed her husband, son, a male nurse and injured 18 people. She was shot by the police.

2009

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2009-04-30	Eisenberg, Tennessee	24	Regensburg	Bavaria	A flatmate of student Tennessee Eisenberg called police about him acting madly and making stabbing motions towards his flatmates. Four police cars showed up, with several officers confronting Eisenberg, who threatened them with a knife. The exact events following have been subject to much scrutiny, as claims by police officers are inconsistent with the nature of the wounds inflicted; it has been established that the fatal shots were fired after Eisenberg had been subdued by warning shots and pepper spray, several shots even hitting him in the back. No officers had to appear in court.[31]

2008

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2008-12-31	J., Dennis	26	Schönfließ	Brandenburg	During an attempted arrest a police officer shot multiple times at the unarmed Dennis J., killing him. The shooter was given a suspended sentence, the other accusees were sentenced to monetary penalties.[32]

2005

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
2005-01-07	Jalloh, Oury	37	Dessau	Saxony-Anhalt	Oury Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean refugee living in Germany, died in a fire in a holding cell in the police station in Dessau. The hands and feet of Jalloh, who was alone in the cell, were tied to a mattress. A fire alarm went off, but was initially turned off without further action by an officer. The case caused national and international outrage. The circumstances and their investigation are still contested.

1999

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1999-06-27	Beate, Friedhelm	63	Heldrungen	Thuringia	The retired Friedhelm Beate was visiting Heldrungen as a tourist and was mistaken by hotel guests for the fugitive felon Dieter Zurwehme. As armed plain-clothes officers attempted to gain access to his room, he assumed that they are robbers. Attempting to prevent them from entering the room, he was shot through the door. The case against the shooters was dropped.

1967

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1967-06-02	Ohnesorg, Benno	26	West Berlin	West Berlin	West-Berlin police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras shot Ohnesorg with his pistol in the back of the head at close range, killing him.

See also

• Lists of killings by law enforcement officers
• Use of firearms by police in Germany

References