Police fatally shot a Sudanese asylum seeker armed with a knife at an asylum home in Lower Saxony, after the man attacked the officers.
Police were first called to the refugee home in the town of Harsefeld on Sunday at around 12 pm as the man was seen with a knife and acting in a threatening manner. Officers were able to calm down the migrant, but were again called to the scene two hours later after he had reportedly been threatening other residents of the asylum home. Believing the migrant to have a mental disorder, police attempted to have him admitted to psychiatric care, but a local court refused.
At just around midnight on Monday morning, the police were called for a third time to the home after another report that the man had been threatening people with a knife. When officers arrived on the scene he attempted to attack them, forcing the officers to open fire, broadcaster NDR reports.
The Sudanese national died a short time later at a hospital due to the injuries.
The public prosecutor’s office in Stade has announced it will be conducting an investigation into the police officers’ actions to determine whether they exercised proper judgement in the fatal shooting. The Cuxhaven Police Department has also announced it will be conducting investigations.
The incident comes just two years after a similar shooting at a refugee home in Bützfleth in 2019 that saw a 19-year-old Afghan asylum seeker shot dead by police after he attacked them with an iron bar. An investigation into the incident by the local prosecutor’s office determined that the officers had acted in self-defence.
Other regions of Germany have also seen asylum seekers shot by police in asylum homes. In 2017, police shot a 41-year-old Afghan in Bavaria after he had stabbed a five-year-old child to death and injured the child’s mother and another child.