After the tragic incident during a soccer tournament on Pentecost Sunday, the 15-year-old victim has died. This was reported by the police and the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt on Wednesday afternoon. For the clarification of the cause of death still an autopsy is to be accomplished in the next days, it is said further. The Frankfurt criminal investigation department continues to investigate how it could come to the crime.
The 16-year-old alleged perpetrator had testified before the Frankfurt District Court on Wednesday. As his lawyer Seyed Iranbomy told t-online, his client had apologized to the victim’s family. He also said that he was a Muslim and prayed for the Berlin player from the bottom of his heart. The 15-year-old had previously been declared brain dead.
According to the district court, there is a charge of dangerous bodily harm resulting in death. The accused 16-year-old is a member of the French youth team FC Metz. He is said to have first attacked another opponent of JFC Berlin during a tournament on Whitsun Sunday at the sports grounds of SV Viktoria Prussia and hit him in the face with both fists. Subsequently, he had taken the 15-year-old in a headlock and hit him in the stomach area. The 15-year-old from Berlin was able to free himself and walk away. Thereupon the accused followed him and gave him a firm blow on the head from behind.
The 16-year-old denies having intentionally injured the teenager. “My client was crying the whole time in the courtroom and is in shock,” said his lawyer Iranbomy. He says the 16-year-old acted in self-defense. According to Iranbomy, the violence had come from the Berlin team. According to the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau”, the lawyer was not present at the scene himself and is relying on witness statements.
Iranbomy criticized the paramedics for arriving on the scene too late and for not questioning the French players as witnesses. “No interpreter was hired either. A Luxembourg player offered himself as a translator, but this was refused,” he says. The spokeswoman for the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, Nadja Niesen, on the other hand, tells t-online that only a specially appointed interpreter would be allowed to translate.