Crime: Two government employees shot dead during a gun check

An employee of the Neumarkt district office was shot during a weapons check in the Upper Palatinate. The police announced this. The armed suspect was still holed up in a residential building in Berngau (Neumarkt district in the Upper Palatinate) that night. According to current findings, the man is said to have shot at the two employees during a routine check on Thursday afternoon.

The police then initially announced that an employee had been killed and another person had been seriously injured. Late in the evening, a spokesman for the Upper Palatinate police headquarters confirmed that the colleague, who was initially thought to be seriously injured, had also died.

“We assume that she died immediately as a result of the shots,” said the spokesman. The situation in which the body was found speaks for this. She has now been rescued from the house where the suspect was still located. The police did not provide any further details about the identity of the victims for the time being.

Police want a peaceful solution

The officials did not expect that the alleged perpetrator had killed or injured other people or was currently threatening them. “There is no other person in his immediate vicinity who is at risk,” said the spokesman. “We are in contact with him, the contact goes both ways.”

The spokesman explained: “We always try to bring about a peaceful solution, which basically takes place through communication. The alternative is also clear to everyone. But the goal is definitely to create a non-violent solution.”

Pure routine control ends in large-scale operations

Around 2 p.m., several emergency calls were received by the police and rescue workers because of the sounds of gunfire. A major operation began that lasted into the night. After the shots, the suspected shooter barricaded himself in the house.

The police surrounded the building. A special operations team drove to Berngau in an armored vehicle, among other things, and a police helicopter was also in use. Meanwhile, people in town should not leave their houses or at least avoid the cordoned off area around the suspect's house.

According to the police, it was purely a routine check on the gun owner. Among other things, it is checked whether the weapons are stored correctly. They shouldn't be taken away from the man or anything like that. Accordingly, it initially remained completely unclear why the suspected perpetrator opened fire on the authorities.