A 17-year-old was stabbed during a dispute between young people in Oberhausen (North Rhine-Westphalia). Three other teenagers survived with serious injuries. The 17-year-old was considered a great talent in Ukrainian basketball.
The basketball club ART Giants Düsseldorf, where he last played, wrote that the young athlete had fled his homeland because of the war. He was part of the U19 Bundesliga team and had occasionally trained with the professionals.
Police and public prosecutors in Essen said a murder squad was able to identify and arrest two young people as suspects after the violent act that occurred on Saturday evening at Oberhausen Central Station. An arrest warrant for manslaughter has been issued against a 15-year-old from Gelsenkirchen. The suspicion against a 14-year-old from Herne was not confirmed. He was released again. Both have already “become a significant criminal figure”. The background to what happened is still unclear.
The killed 17-year-old and a critically injured man (18) from Düsseldorf were Ukrainians. A 14-year-old Syrian from Gelsenkirchen and a 13-year-old German-Lebanese woman were also injured. The 15-year-old suspect is German-Turkish, the 14-year-old from Herne is German-Greek.
Suspected perpetrators initially fled
The young people had already had a verbal altercation on a bus on the way to Oberhausen city center on Saturday evening. When those involved got off the bus at the main train station, the argument escalated. The two suspected perpetrators initially fled, but were identified on Sunday.
All of the injured were taken to hospitals, where the 17-year-old died during an emergency operation. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kiev said that a representative of the Ukrainian Consulate General in Düsseldorf had already spoken to the Essen police chief. According to Ukrainian media reports, the 17-year-old took part in the European Championships in Bulgaria in 2022 with the Ukrainian U-16 national team.
The basketball club ART Giants Düsseldorf paid tribute to the young man on its website: “Events happen that sometimes simply cannot be understood or put into words. We mourn and say goodbye to our young player Volodymyr Y., who died on Saturday evening fell victim to an act of violence and died.” In order to escape the war in his native country, he came to Düsseldorf in July 2023, where he found his new home. A teammate of his survived the brutal attack injured.
