Austrian man gets 15 years for ex-wife’s murder in Geneva

An Austrian lawyer who allegedly shot his ex-wife to death two years ago in Geneva after watching a football game on TV has been sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison.

Published: 18 June 2016 12:37 CEST

Austrian man gets 15 years for ex-wife's murder in Geneva

View of Geneva. Photo: Yann/Wikimedia

The 37-year-old Viennese man was found and arrested at the scene with the murder weapon in June 2014.

According to the court, the man executed his 42-year-old wife with five shots shortly after watching a football match with his son. It was stated that the man feared his wife, who was Mexican, would return to Mexico with their two children after the end of their marriage.

The man had bought the gun in Vienna just a few months previously. He claimed that he remembered taking his son back to his ex-wife's home, but that he had no memory whatsoever of the events which led to her death.

The defense team sought an acquittal in relation to the alleged memory loss, but the court was not persuaded, and sentenced him to 15 years in custody in Switzerland.

The murder took place in the centre of Geneva. The ex-spouses had apparently been arguing for years.

The couple had originally lived, according to media reports, in St. Gallen but then had separated and divorced.

The lawyer had moved to Germany, while the woman and her children moved to Geneva. Swiss authorities had previously imposed a restraining order on the man because of his behaviour towards his ex-wife.

Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.