Matthias Monroy

Police continue to investigate the cause of death

The circumstances surrounding the death of a man who died in police custody in Braunschweig remain unclear. The responsible public prosecutor’s office told “nd” that the cause of death of the 38-year-old could not be determined during an autopsy at the Hannover Medical School. However, the examinations so far had not found any evidence of “relevant or fatal violence”.

So far, there is no independent information on the incident. However, a photo of an intubated black person named “Johnson” was posted on Instagram on Sunday, purportedly showing the deceased. “You can see he was beaten,” the anonymous author wrote there. According to this, the deceased is his uncle.

As is usually seen in such cases, further investigations will not be conducted by the police station concerned, but by the neighbouring police station in Gifhorn. A toxicological examination ordered by the public prosecutor’s office is to find out whether the man, on whom drugs were allegedly found, died of poisoning due to the consumption of alcohol or narcotics. This result is expected to be available in the coming days. A further investigation into possible previous illnesses will take “several weeks or even months, according to experience”, according to the public prosecutor’s office.

The man had been arrested in a pub on New Year’s morning after he had sprayed pepper spray and injured at least four guests, according to police. Witnesses had named the man as a suspect, and he was said to have resisted police forces.

At the police headquarters, the accused attacked two employees “with punches”, after which he was handcuffed, the police said. As he was “apparently under the influence of narcotics”, the man was medically intercepted by a doctor who was present in custody. Only when she wanted to take a blood sample on the order of a judge did she realise that he had lost consciousness and started resuscitation measures. An emergency doctor who was called in was said to have used a defibrillator. After his vital functions had been restored, the man was transferred to the Braunschweig hospital. He died there on the night of 3 January.

Another man died in police custody in Berlin-Tempelhof at the beginning of the year. The 68-year-old had been brought in early in the afternoon “after an ongoing trespass”, having been ordered by a judge to remain in custody until the end of the day, according to the police in the only press release on the incident so far. At around 8 p.m., a police employee saw the man lying motionless in the “custody room” during a patrol. Officers and an immediately called emergency doctor initiated resuscitation, but the man died on the spot.

“According to the first statement of a doctor on call, health circumstances could be the reason for the death,” the police wrote in their report. A post-mortem examination to determine the exact cause of death was carried out at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Charité hospital, a spokesperson for the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office explained at the request of “nd”. According to the report, the cause was pneumonia in connection with a corona disease. The man had also had a heart disease.

There were no indications of any external influence. As in Braunschweig, a toxicological-chemical examination was also ordered in Berlin. Further investigations into the cause of death were taken over by the criminal investigation department of the Southern Directorate, which also includes the Tempelhof district.

Published in German in „nd“.

The Braunschweig police headquarters (symbolic image) (Axel Hindemith, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0).