German Father Goes to Trial for Son's Shooting Rampage

     According to this bbc.com article, a German man, Joerg Kretschmer, father of Tim Kretschmer, is accused of violating gun laws after Tim,17, took one of his father's pistols to school. Tim shot and killed 8 female students, one male student and three teachers at his German school in Winnenden back in March 2009, before killing himself as police closed in on him. 
     The interesting part of this trial is that Joerg legally owned his weapons, each one of his dozen or so weapons stored in his house were indeed registered. Joerg is being accused of failing to keep his 9mm Bretta pistol secure and can face a fine or a prison sentence. About 41 relatives of the victims of this incident are serving as co-plantiffs in this trial, which is allowed under German Law.
     Initially, Joerg had been charged with "manslaughter and grievous bodily harm, but a court ruled that these more serious charges could only be considered if his actions had directly caused the massacre." Joerg himself was at one point going to be charged for quite literally his son's crime.
     There are many questions the arise with this court case, some that cannot be answered through this article alone. For instance, can it be proven that his pistol was not secured, that perhaps his son had to search for it or that his son at 17 years old was able to to remove the secured weapon on his own?
     What's most interesting to me is that tragedies such as this have happened here in the states, yet rarely do we hear of offenders' parents being brought to court and potentially being charged for manslaughter based on their children's actions. Indeed a crime was committed, but because the offender in longer available for punishment, is it really fair to spread that punishment to a parent, someone who played no part in the actual crime? 


Submitted by: Jaime Hacker