When police wanted to check his car, a 17-year-old hit the gas. The escape led several kilometers through Hamburg and ended a few minutes later in a field of rubble in front of the Hotel Atlantic. His passenger died. The young driver has now been sentenced to seven years in prison for murder.
The now 18-year-old drove unbraked into oncoming traffic near the Kennedy Bridge on January 31st at around 130 kilometers per hour, said the chairwoman of the youth chamber, Anne Meier-Göring. An oncoming van driver was no longer able to prevent the collision. While the 28-year-old sprinter driver was injured, the defendant's 35-year-old passenger died. The judge emphasized that far more people could have died.
The young man had passed a traffic stop in the Eimsbüttel district just two minutes before the accident at 86 km/h. A police officer wanted to stop him as the last vehicle on his shift. The young man explained in court that the passenger had advised him to simply accelerate, and so he accelerated the car, a black BMW.
The defendant raced through the next intersection at 122 kilometers per hour when the light was red, and over the next one near the Schlump subway station at 146. In the trial, which was conducted behind closed doors until the verdict was announced, the court watched the police video recording several times. “They drove through Hamburg like they were on a Formula 1 circuit,” said the chairwoman of the chamber.
“I wanted to escape the police,” the defendant explained in court. The BMW 3 Series was his first car, which he bought as a 17-year-old without a driving license for 3,700 euros. Apparently the Afghan, who came to Germany at the age of 13, paid for the car with his citizen's money. But the court didn't believe him. He probably financed it with income from the marijuana trade.
The refugee, who only has one older brother in Hamburg, quickly learned German, but neither completed school nor received any training. The 35-year-old who died in the accident got him a job with a security company that worked on a construction site at the university.
The car was a status symbol for the defendant that he showed off on Tiktok, said Meier-Goering. He drove the car with stolen license plates, without insurance and often under the influence of cannabis. On that Saturday morning at the end of January, he picked up his colleague in Altona to go to work. But first both men smoked a joint together in the car.
By fleeing, the defendant wanted to prevent the car from being confiscated. Because that had already happened to him the year before, with his older brother's car. During a check, the police smelled a strong smell of marijuana and discovered drugs in the vehicle, the judge explained.
The judgment is not yet legally binding.
