Bundeswehr incident

New witness statement puts hunter in trouble

View from the woman's high position, who fired from around ten meters above the heads of the German soldiers.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/zVg)

At the beginning of September , a female hunter shoots at elite soldiers in Carinthia. New witness statements obtained by the "Krone" reveal the woman's shocking hunting behavior.

"I myself am a passionate hunter, gamekeeper and official of the Lower Austrian Hunting Association. But I have never experienced anything like this in 24 years of service in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America!" One month after the dangerous incident in Carinthia, in which a 68-year-old local hunter shot at elite soldiers of the German army, a participant in the exercise expressed his bewilderment to the "Krone" newspaper.

The public prosecutor's office in Klagenfurt has dropped the investigation against the woman, saying that the shot from a distance of around ten meters was justifiable. The woman had credibly "felt threatened by terrorists" in the idyllic wooded area in Friesach.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/zVg)

Woman "not frightened, but aggressive"
The testimony of one of the four soldiers involved, which is available to the "Krone", reads differently. The woman was not frightened or unsettled, but appeared highly aggressive:

"At 9.23 p.m., we stopped at the Schratzbach T-junction. The driver and I got out of the car when suddenly a shot rang out from a distance of about 8 meters. The shot was fired over our heads, the muzzle flash was clearly visible."

Shortly afterwards, a vehicle drove up: "An elderly man got out and told us that a gun was pointed at us. (...) Talking to the woman, I realized that the gun was indeed pointed at me. It stayed that way for ten minutes." Then the police arrived.

Shot "immediately and without warning"
It was also emphatically noted that the shot was fired "immediately after we got out of the car and without warning over our heads". This differs greatly from the statements of the hunter, who emphasized that she had approached the soldiers several times. The victims now want to file a continuation application with the public prosecutor's office in Klagenfurt.

The exercise under the direction of the hunting command had been duly announced in advance.(Bild: Pusch)

2002 conscript shot dead
This is because the woman could have hit other participants in the exercise - as happened in 2002 when a hunter near Pinkafeld killed 20-year-old conscript Christian Brenner with a shot to the head. At the time, he claimed to have been aiming at a wild boar 60 meters away in the dark. The shot - fired without a bullet trap, just as in Carinthia - missed and fatally hit the young lad 180 meters away.