More than 10 years in prison for German motorway sniper

A court in the south-central German city of Würzburg has sentenced a long-haul trucker to ten-and-a-half years in prison for having shot at other trucks from his cab in a series of more than 700 attacks over a period of some five years.

The man was found guilty on four charges of attempted murder, and was also convicted of having caused grievous bodily harm and dangerous hindrance of road traffic.

The accused admitted having fired the shots, but claimed he only wanted to hit the loads the trucks were carrying, without any intention of injuring anyone.

However, some of his bullets ended up hitting truck cabs and even cars, with one woman driver suffering severe throat injuries from a ricochet in 2009.

The man, who comes from the Eifel region near the Belgian border, was arrested in June 2013 after a years-long investigation on a previously unprecedented scale.

Driving frustrations

In an exclusive interview with the German automobile magazine Auto Bild in October, the 58-year-old man said he had been provoked by a series of incidents targeting his truck, including theft of personal items and diesel fuel.

A near-accident with a car transporter had been the final trigger, he said, leading to his mostly attacking this kind of vehicle.

During the trial, his defense lawyers had claimed that the electronic monitoring of the motorway used to obtain his arrest, during which millions of car registration numbers were recorded and assessed, was illegal and that their client should be allowed to go free because of this.

tj/nm (dpa, AFP)