Posted on 03/15/2008 1:52:07 AM PDT by SolidWood
BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier stationed in southern Germany was shot dead by police after threatening an ex-girlfriend and then going on the run armed with an assault rifle, authorities said on Friday.
The 30-year old, who was serving in the 2nd, "Dagger," brigade of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, broke into the woman's house late on Thursday, threatened her and tied her up, police in the Bavarian region of Unterfranken said.
She was able to free herself and alerted the police, who began a search using a commando unit and a helicopter equipped with thermal imaging equipment.
Officers found the soldier several hundred meters from the woman's house and tried to arrest him but he threatened them with the semi-automatic rifle and was shot, police said.
He died in hospital early on Friday, according to a statement from the "Dagger" Brigade Chain of Command.
"The Dagger Brigade along with the United States Army Europe takes incidents of this nature extremely seriously and will continue to work with the German authorities to maintain community safety," the statement said.
The name of the soldier was being withheld until his next of kin had been informed, it added.
German police said there was no indication that officers had acted illegally and prosecutors were not planning to open an investigation into the marksmen.
"The officers had to assume that the suspect was going to fire on them with the weapon," a police statement said.
(Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
We have agreements with NATO countries (and most others we have troops in), that a soldier that commits a civil offense in the host country will be tried by that country in its courts. If he commits a crime on base or against onother soldier, we deal with it.
Of course, "alcohol was involved."
Vogelveh. "Birdache?" <}B^)
I worked out of our sales office on the Vogelhainweg in Sindelfingen. I still don't know the exact translation of that.
You bet cha. Good ole German beer. 99.8% of the time.
Ummm. German Polizei are like Military Police.
I recall it not being uncommon to see them wandering around with Machine Pistols. ...I even got to watch the police take blood from an uncooperative drunk driver...through his nose, with a steel collection bowl, after bouncing his face off the police car.
And every interaction I had with them, they were *exceptionally* professional.
That's several levels of trouble there...including that Nazis are illegal in Germany.
have a problem when we let Germans and not our own army deal with such problems. It’s a bad precedent.
Do what now??? This happened OFF a US base on GERMAN TERRITORY. First of all man...lemme give you a heads up on something: German cops go through 4 years of basic police training before they hit the streets. They are a hell of a lot more qualified (not to mention their SWAT teams) to handle this kind of a situation.
Secondly, what about if a german soldier stationed here were to do this kind of thing...would you want the German Army to come chase this guy down in the streets of Ft. Bliss???? Get real man.
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