On suspicion of murder

Fatal shots fired at burglar: shooter arrested

The burglar was fatally shot in Salzburg-Gnigl in July.(Bild: Markus Tschepp)

Dramatic turn of events in the case of the fatal shooting of a burglar in Salzburg-Gnigl: the shooter was arrested on Friday. The Salzburg public prosecutor's office is investigating on suspicion of murder.

Following the fatal shooting of a suspected burglar by a house owner on July 31 in the city of Salzburg, the 66-year-old shooter was arrested in Salzburg on Friday. The public prosecutor's office sees an urgent suspicion of murder because the burglar was probably already on the run when the shots were fired.

The 31-year-old was hit in the back of the head by a bullet, the public prosecutor's office said in a statement on Friday.

Shot from a distance of nine meters
According to the current state of the investigation, the accused shot the burglar several times with a handgun. One bullet hit the man in the head from a distance of 9.15 meters. "According to the suspicions, the deceased and his companion were about to flee from the homeowner's property when the shots were fired. Given this situation, the Salzburg public prosecutor's office does not currently assume that there was a situation of self-defense," the statement reads. 

Suspect wanted his weapon back
The arrest of the 66-year-old was ordered due to the danger of committing the crime. This resulted from the fact that the suspect had recently tried to get his handgun back from the Salzburg Provincial Police Directorate as the weapons authority, despite the pending investigation and the provisional weapons ban imposed on him. He justified this by stating that he needed the firearm to protect himself against burglaries at dusk.

His lawyer Kurt Jelinek told the "Krone" newspaper: "My client is innocent, as one must in any case assume a self-defense situation or the erroneous assumption of such."