Entrepreneurs in Völkermarkt attacked: Perpetrators with steel rod attacked!

Entrepreneurs in Völkermarkt attacked: Perpetrators with steel rod attacked!

Völkermarkt, Österreich - in Völkermarkt, a small town in Austria, a 52-year-old entrepreneur was victim of a brutal raid. According to Today.at , his attackers, a 22-year-old Croatian and a 32-year-old Austrian, found themselves in a dark underground car park, where the Croatian started with a steel rod on the entrepreneur. The attack was designed so that the perpetrator not only called for a cell phone, but also the victim's shoulder bag. While both burglars were initially fleeing, they were arrested shortly afterwards by an alarm search, whereby the police found the stolen goods in their vehicle.

motif and background of the crime

The Croatian perpetrator confessed in the interrogation that he had received the order to give the entrepreneur a “memo”, but it remained unclear who was behind this criminal plan. According to the prosecutor Markus Kitz, whether the attack was intended as a robbery or whether there was another intention. The motif could be in real estate transactions. Interestingly, the Croatian described the role of its accomplices as supportive: his physical stature should serve to scare the entrepreneur, while he himself was responsible for the actual violence.

This dark episode raises questions about the background of violence and acts in criminal acts, a topic that was also discussed during the “Perpetrator and Victim” workshop at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen. The complex relationships between perpetrators and victims were illuminated and morality and legal aspect had a central role. The panel discussions made it clear that the assignment to the groups of perpetrators and victims is often not as clear as they seem. These insights could also be important for the assessment of the robbery in Völkermarkt, where the Croatian perpetrator explicitly stated that they had acted due to an anonymous order and thus could demonstrate the weaknesses of a clear perpetrator-victim dichotomy, as was also the case in hsozkult.de