The moments of the Mannheim inspection are fully documented in videos. In the clips, which have been shared countless times on social networks, and in the recordings of the surveillance cameras, you can see how the future victim crosses the street, how one of the police officers grabs him and how the man escapes before of him being caught. dominated. The agent throws the man to the ground along with his colleague, pins the man who was lying face down with his knee and hits him in the face several times. The overwhelmed man bleeds from his nose and remains face down for a few minutes. One last movement and then he stops moving.

According to the prosecution, the man had previously visited his doctor at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim because he had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for years and his condition had worsened. However, he left again and his doctor could not convince him to return. The worried doctor finally asked the two police officers for help because he feared his patient would be in danger.

Fiscal: Upper body pressure

Prosecutors are convinced that the 300-pound man died because he was lying on the ground and could no longer breathe properly due to the pressure on his upper body and because his nose was bleeding.

In his opinion, the second police officer, a police chief accused of homicide by negligent omission, did not use unjustified force. But he didn't put the man in a lateral position either. According to a preliminary forensic assessment, the death could have been prevented “with almost certainty,” he said. “The 47-year-old could have breathed more freely.”

The defense, however, refers to a report it commissioned according to which the 47-year-old man died of cardiac arrest following circulatory failure. “The trial will be decided on the basis of the reports,” the 27-year-old officer's defense lawyer stated with conviction. “The reports come to different conclusions and now it depends on which one the camera follows.”