A man is said to have killed a doctor in Upper Bavaria who worked as a forensic doctor with mentally ill and addicted criminals. The background to the attack was initially unclear on Tuesday – for example, whether the 40-year-old suspect knew his victim or whether he was a patient at the psychiatric clinic. The public prosecutor’s office and the criminal police are now investigating murder against the man, who was arrested by police shortly after the crime on Monday evening, covered in blood. According to police, the suspected murder weapon, a kitchen knife, was seized.
The Upper Bavaria administrative district is responsible for the affected clinic for psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychosomatic medicine, geriatrics and neurology in Wasserburg am Inn (Rosenheim district). According to a district spokeswoman, the 64-year-old doctor had been employed at the clinic for many years. She doesn’t know whether the man was threatened before the crime – the police are investigating. “He only worked with lawbreakers, in law enforcement,” said the spokeswoman. The attack occurred after the man had finished his duties.
After the incident, the suspect was taken to a specialist forensic clinic in the Munich district for an examination – there it will be clarified whether he may be mentally impaired. Information about his possible motive was not initially made public.
A witness alerted police officers to the victim shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday evening. The officers were actually on the clinic grounds for another operation. First responders attended to the injured man, but he died shortly afterwards.
The suspect was therefore able to be arrested without resistance not far from the crime scene, on the hospital grounds. Operations at the clinic continued largely as normal on Tuesday, as the spokeswoman said. “There are patients there.” However, there was the opportunity for employees to turn to emergency pastoral care and crisis intervention.
The penal system involves the accommodation of mentally ill or addicted criminals in order to protect the population and to provide therapy for those affected. One option is to place offenders in a psychiatric hospital. The prerequisite is that someone was only partially or not at all responsible for the crime and is still dangerous to the general public.
According to the Bavarian Hospital Association, employees in emergency rooms are particularly affected by verbal attacks such as insults and threats, but also physical assaults. But he doesn’t have any figures. “This mainly happens in the emergency rooms, where there is a certain stressful situation because patients have to wait a long time or feel treated unfairly because other patients seem to be given priority all the time.” Some clinics, such as in Munich, also hired a security guard at particularly critical times such as Oktoberfest to protect employees.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated.
