According to the police, the suspect is a 40-year-old man who was arrested in the near-by flat of the victim. The relationship of the arrested man to the deceased has not yet been disclosed. Neither has it been announced whether there are other possible perpetrators. The police did, however, provide first details about the victim. He is a 46-year old man. An autopsy is still pending, the police confirmed.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a person walking along Langeler Straße had discovered the man's body. Only 50 metres from the Cologne-Porz-Langel city border, he had seen two trainers sticking out of a manhole on a grass verge between the footpath and the road. The young passer-by, visibly shocked, immediately alerted the fire brigade and police at around 1.40 a.m. An ambulance and emergency doctor were also called in.

Body wrapped in blood-soaked blanket and covered with gravel

At the scene, the emergency services were confronted with a frightening picture: A corpse was hanging upside down in the manhole, covered with grit. The Lülsdorf fire brigade, which was on the scene with twelve firefighters, first had to dig the grit out of the manhole in order to be able to reach the corpse.

With the help of a turntable ladder and a hoist, the badly battered body was pulled out of the gully and placed on the grass verge. A blood-soaked blanket had been wrapped around the body, our GA reporter reported from the scene. The emergency doctor was only able to pronounce the victim dead.

Perpetrators had probably transported grit from the riding stables with a wheelbarrow.

The grit with which the body of the 46-year-old man had been covered in the manhole was apparently taken by the perpetrator or perpetrators from a riding stable about 100 metres away with a wheelbarrow the police told the GA during the night.

Manhole is only 1.50 metres deep

However, the perpetrator(s) had obviously chosen the wrong place to hide the body. It is true that the sewer shaft is only a rainwater overflow, which is checked at most once a year, as employees of the city of Niederkassel confirmed to the GA on Sunday morning. So the body might have remained undiscovered for a long time. But the shaft is only 1.50 metres deep - so the dead man's trainers were still sticking out of the manhole and had thus attracted the witness's attention.

It is still unclear how exactly the manhole could have been opened. Lifting the heavy cover usually requires special tools. Or you need to be extremely strong.

There is still no further information on the exact circumstances of the death. A homicide squad of the Bonn criminal police has taken up the investigation. Traces were found in the area where the body was found on the road connecting Lülsdorf and Porz-Langel.

Autopsy on Sunday

The body was finally recovered at around 5 a.m. on Sunday morning and taken to the forensic medicine department, the police said.

(Original text: Michael Wrobel and Dieter Hombach; Translation: Jean Lennox)