After his arrival in Germany, A. G. quickly tried to integrate. He attended German courses, got his driving license and found work at an electrical company. He will soon earn 2,000 to 2,200 euros net. After a serious accident involving high current, he has to give up his job. He then completes retraining to become a truck driver. At the same time, he regularly attends church, maintains his small apartment, he has nothing to do with drugs, and he hardly drinks alcohol, as he told the court. And in 2019 he married his wife. From the outside, there seemed to be a lot to suggest successful integration.
Unrecognized conflicts, psychological mortgages
But language skills, work and an apartment say little about the personal conflicts a person has with them. Probably also with A. G. It started in 2011, when he fled Eritrea for the first time. The authoritarian regime required him to do “national service,” a combination of military service and a year of community service with the nasty catch that the state often arbitrarily extends the duration by years. In addition, according to the United Nations, participants in national service are repeatedly victims of torture, humiliation and mistreatment. It is unknown whether A. G. suffered something similar.
In any case, he escapes from national service to South Sudan. The fact that outbreaks of violence with injuries and deaths are increasing there does not deter him. Only when the civil war escalated completely did he flee further to Europe. Here, in Germany, his asylum application was rejected twice, according to the court and the defense. A.G. stays anyway. And receives a toleration.
Serious bodily harm and relationship conflicts
There was also an alarming incident in 2017: he argued with a colleague at a construction site. A.G. chokes him by the neck so that the man can no longer breathe. He then kicks him twice hard in the stomach with his steel-toed safety shoes. His victim has to go to the hospital. A. G. is sentenced to six months probation for grievous bodily harm. According to press reports, religious issues are also said to have led to conflicts between the couple. And when he is said to have killed her on that November Sunday in 2025, they were on the way back from church service.
And then there is his relationship behavior: According to the lawyer representing the father of the deceased, “difficulties in the marriage” soon emerged after the marriage, which took place in East Africa in 2019, even though they were not yet living together. It was not until 2024 that his wife followed him to Germany as part of family reunification - despite the conflicts. Nevertheless, she decided to join her family in Germany, where, according to her lawyer, she hoped for a safe and peaceful life. But “the conflicts with the defendant continued” and, according to the lawyer, the woman experienced them as so dangerous that she moved into a refugee accommodation with her child, born in 2025, in order to protect herself and her child.
Don’t reduce it to “terrible circumstances of her death.”
There are all sorts of rumors circulating as to why the spatial separation occurred - from adultery to outbreaks of violence. But it is unclear what caused the relationship conflict to culminate in a suspected killing. What is undoubted is the heavy burden that the woman's death places on her relatives. They suffer from the violent death of a loved one and the public attention the case attracts. The lawyer says the deceased should be remembered "as the woman she was" and not reduced to the "terrible circumstances of her death" (even though it was these circumstances that made the case so well known). She then explains: "She grew up in a loving and supportive family. Respect, discipline, education, hard work, faith and care for others" were the defining values of the woman who only lived to see her child for three months.
