“Quite normal”, says Josef D.* normal-that he had gone to the day to work. Normally, he took his children thereafter. Normally you had gone shopping.
“Quite normal”, two words, the 37-Year-old repeatedly in court as a Mantra to describe a day that took his life are the norm.
the 31. May 2016, the four-year-old son at the checkout of a super market in the Hamburg district of Harburg, on a railing of the handle and froze. A day later, Jonathan was dead.
Now the process has begun in the Harburg district court. The super-market operators, a 44-Year-old and his 48-year-old sister, is accused of negligent homicide. You multi-year prison sentences. The power line to a transformer was installed according to the indictment, by either the operators themselves or by third parties commissioned unprofessional. The Prosecutor speaks of a “for Amateur visible Amateur supply”. Jonathan closed by touching the circuit, and in consequence of a cardiac arrest suffered.
The defendants do not comment. The lawyer of the man suggests that he is aiming for an acquittal. He says the accused had been threatened, and stressed that they had tried to contact Jonathan’s parents. He says: “The sadness will dominate the hall, the atmosphere in this court.”
Joseph D. place takes, get the grief a face. He sits upright and tells what, in his view, at 31. May 2016 happened.
After work he had gone with his sons in those supermarket. He had visited the Store two-three times in the year, especially to get some rice and black tea. His younger son had been in the child seat of the shopping cart sat Jonathan on the shelf for beverage crates. They had arrived at the cashier, Sekabet and Joseph D. began to lay the Goods on the Band.
“Papa, can I come forward?”, have Jonathan asked him, and Joseph D. said “Yes”. But then Jonathan had been completely silent. As Josef D. looked after his son, have opened a held with one Hand on a metal railing, his head in a slanting Position on the Arm dropped, eyes wide.
The last Time Jonathan breathed’ve
Josef D. have themselves to the railing in focus, and “ants” felt like an electric shock. “With force,” he snatched his son from the railing. “Jonathan, Jonathan”, he repeated: “No sound.” Joseph D. takes a break, his head bent, short, and of the audience benches, heard faint crying.
In the supermarket have helped no one. Then I imagined a man as a doctor, Jonathan brought in the recovery position and an ambulance called. “I was shocked”, says Joseph D., “I knew what I should do.”
Josef D. the Details are visible is important, several times he stands up to Jonathan’s position in front of the cash register, shows the frozen Gestures of his son, mimicking a Rattle, and says, it might have been the last Time Jonathan had breathed.
According to the description of the father of Jonathan says a former children’s doctor. Jonathan was “a completely inconspicuous Boy,” “the has developed normal”. The coroner who performed the autopsy, specifies in detail that after a range of investigations “in the case of this child, no alternative cause of death” was established; a current accident is plausible, although one could exclude certain rare heart disease never absolute.
while Joseph D. testifies, and asks the coroner to him, whether there had been situations in the first years of life of Jonathan, in which he is not responsive, not awake. “On the contrary,” replies Josef D., “he has kept us awake.” It is the only moment in which a short Laugh through the hall of echoes.
*the Name has been changed
