Prosecutor killed in German court shooting: ministry

BERLIN - Agence France-Presse

A police line is seen in front of a regional court after a shooting in Dachau near Munich January 11, 2012. REUTERS photo

A defendant shot dead a prosecutor at a court in the southern German city of Dachau Wednesday, a spokesman for the state justice ministry said.

The man fired three shots at the prosecutor at the local district court and the victim later succumbed to his wounds in hospital, said the spokesman, Wilfried Krames, adding that the case was thought to revolve around a family dispute.

A police spokesman, Peter Griesser, said the gunman was detained at the scene and that he had no information about other victims.

"We must see if he shot at other people but according to what we know, no one else was injured," the spokesman said.

"Several witnesses to the shooting are suffering from shock." A local daily, TZ, said the victim was a 31-year-old who had only begun working for the prosecutor's office one year ago. It said he was shot in the arm, shoulder and abdomen.

National newspaper Bild said the defendant was 54 years old.

German courts often have relatively lax security measures, particularly when cases not involving felonies are being heard. In April 2009, a 60-year-old gunman killed a female family member and then himself at a courthouse hearing over an inheritance dispute in the southern city of Landshut. And in July of the same year, a German man stabbed and killed a pregnant headscarved Egyptian woman in the eastern city of Dresden in a case which also provoked outrage in the Muslim world.

The killer, Alex Wiens, was later sentenced to life imprisonment.