Homicide squad investigates Traces secured after gangs clash in Mehlem
Mehlem · In a clash between two gangs in Mehlem shots were fired and four people injured, the police are trying to reconstruct the events. Many questions remain unanswered. On Monday, residents reacted to the incident with surprise.
On Monday, Bonn police officers continued to secure evidence at the site of the clash between two groups in Mehlem, and investigations are ongoing. Local residents reacted to the incident with surprise. As reported, the police had set up a homicide squad on Sunday after a 26-year-old man was found with a gunshot wound. This was apparently preceded by a dispute between rival groups.
On Monday afternoon, the streets in northern Mehlem, named after characters from the Saga of the Nibelungs, were quiet, with social housing and 240-square-metre condominiums next door to each other on the site of the former Saudi residence. The Federal Office for Information Security has a branch office within sight. In Rüdigerstraße, a small cul-de-sac between Hauptstraße and the Rhine, three uniformed officers stood next to a patrol car, a few metres away two colleagues from the forensic department did their work. They meticulously examined the interior of a white Ford Transit, parked without number plates in front of an inconspicuous two-family house.
According to reports, one of the two Syrian families whose members are said to be involved in the dispute lives in one of the two former federal employees' flats. The opponents are said to live in the south of Beuel. What exactly was at stake remained as open on Monday as the exact course of events. Investigators describe the research as "laborious". Suspicions about a family dispute or domestic violence quickly spread in the surroundings - so far without confirmation. A local resident reacted to the incidents with astonishment: "At least during the day it is always quiet here," she said.
The only thing that is clear for the time being is that witnesses became aware of the dispute on Sunday at around 2.15 pm, which shifted loudly from Rüdigerstraße towards Mainzer Straße, and shots are said to have been heard in the course of the dispute. When the police arrived, some of the people involved are said to have disappeared. About a dozen people were still being attacked by the large contingent, including four injured. One of them, a 26-year-old man, was sitting in a car on Mainzer Strasse with a gunshot wound in his back. According to GA information, however, no projectiles were found. However, a doctor confirmed that it was a gunshot wound.
(Original text: Rüdiger Franz / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
