A demonstration was held in Oldenburg on Friday over the fatal shooting of 21-year-old Lorenz A. The Fundamental Rights Committee warns against accepting police accounts without checking them.

The 21-year-old who was killed by a police officer in Oldenburg on Easter Sunday was hit from behind by at least three shots. This was announced by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday regarding the preliminary results of the post-mortem examination. The body of the young black man was found to have gunshot wounds to the hip, upper body and head. A fourth bullet is said to have grazed his thigh.

According to a solidarity group, the Oldenburg man’s name was Lorenz. According to the police, he fled on Sunday at 2.40 a.m. after an altercation in front of a discotheque, where he is said to have slightly injured two security guards and two people with an irritant. Several people had broken off an initial pursuit because the man had allegedly threatened to use a knife.

When police officers approached him, Lorenz fled again. Accordingly, another patrol car crew confronted him in a side street. He approached the officers in a ‘threatening’ manner and sprayed irritant gas again. A 27-year-old police officer then ‘made use of his firearm’. The victim died in hospital.

Some of this account needs to be corrected. A knife, which was mentioned in the first police press release, was indeed found on the dead man – but according to the public prosecutor, there was ‘no indication that he threatened the police officers with a knife’. A witness told the newspaper ‘Taz’ that the man had been driven into the street in question by the officers as he fled; then the shots were fired. The fact that the police officer fired from behind also suggests that the situation was not ‘threatening’.

As is usual in such cases, the Oldenburg Public Prosecutor’s Office has initiated a death investigation against the suspended police shooter – but on suspicion of manslaughter and not just for assault resulting in death, as is usual in such cases. The shooting would only be proportionate if the 27-year-old can credibly demonstrate that he acted in self-defence. If there are doubts about this, the Public Prosecutor’s Office can press charges.

The Delmenhorst police department – which was itself in the firing line in 2021 after 19-year-old Qosay Sadam Khalaf collapsed in custody and eventually died in hospital – has been tasked with the investigation ‘for reasons of neutrality’. Witness statements at the time differed significantly from the police report. Despite this, the investigation against the officers was dropped.

‘We now know the police procedures for framing after a death operation like this by heart, as they always follow the same script,’ explains Michèle Winkler from the Cologne Committee for Fundamental Rights. Among other things, the organisation has followed the trial against four police officers who were involved in the fatal operation against the young Senegalese refugee Mouhamed Dramé in Dortmund. ‘The only question is why there are still media outlets that accept the police’s initial version without checking it,’ says Winkler about the fatal shootings in Oldenburg.

In the state of Lower Saxony, Interior Minister Daniela Behrens ( Social Democrats) spoke of ‘devastating accusations’ after the autopsy results were published on Tuesday, but also warned against prejudging the police officers. Michael Lühmann, spokesperson for the Greens in the Lower Saxony state parliament, called the autopsy report ‘shocking’, but called for the investigation to be awaited before any political judgement is made.

However, the district chairman of the Oldenburg city Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has labelled ‘sweeping accusations of institutional racism and police violence in an investigation that is still completely open’ as “dubious” and ‘dangerous’. The right-wing AfD parliamentary group’s domestic policy spokesperson in the state parliament is calling for police officers to ‘always’ stand behind them in the event of fatal shootings. Lower Saxony’s section of the German Police Union (DpolG) is using the incident to push for the use of Tasers for patrol duty – although these may not be used against fleeing persons.

A spontaneous initiative called ‘Justice for Lorenz’ was founded in the city, which organised a memorial at the crime scene on Friday evening. ‘We stand united against racism, which is also structural in the police force,’ the appeal reads. 10,000 people turned up – an unprecedented number for years in a city where there have been fatal police shootings.

Published in German in „nd“.

Image: Protest in Oldenburg (Friedrich Kraft).