The attack on a mourner in Altbach could have ended much worse. Apparently, the suspect did not use a firecracker, but a hand grenade – which only missed its full effect due to fortunate circumstances.
The explosive device thrown at mourners in Altbach in the Esslingen district last Friday lunchtime is very likely to have been an M75 hand grenade, according to our newspaper. Police explosives experts assume that the hand grenade, manufactured in the former Yugoslavia, was thrown by the 23-year-old suspect at the up to 500 visitors of a funeral. According to the report, the fragments found in the cemetery point to a hand grenade of this type or of the identical type M93, which was manufactured in Macedonia.
The suspected perpetrator, an Iranian, had thrown the explosive device over the cemetery wall toward the mourners. The grenade bounced off the branch of a large tree and exploded on the upper level of the cemetery, which was built on a hill. The explosion injured ten mourners, one seriously. Other visitors chased the perpetrator, confronted him, punched and kicked him. He was flown to a hospital by rescue helicopter, seriously injured. The young man has since been arrested. He apparently took a cab to the cemetery in Altbach and allegedly asked the driver to wait for him to return.
The funeral was held for 20-year-old Fortune M. from Altbach. The man with Kenyan roots had died in a train accident shortly after midnight on June 3. On social networks, friends and acquaintances had collected money to pay for the funeral – and urged to attend the ceremony on Friday at noon from 11 am.
The M75 hand grenade is a spherical explosive device. Up to 3,000 pinhead-sized spheres are cast into the hard plastic shell, which are lethal within a radius of 12 to 18 meters when the grenade explodes. Within a radius of 30 to 54 meters, they injure and maim victims. Investigators believe that the explosion of the grenade would have caused bloodshed in Altbach if it had not been intercepted by a tree branch.