Man shoots about him with a pistol

A man living in Neuheim shot twice into the ground near another man. But the charge at the Criminal Court in Zug was not "only" limited to endangering life, but included several other offences.

According to the prosecutor, these are scenes that would easily be suitable for the next edition of the "Tatort" television programme. Whether the comparison with a TV series is questionable appropriate, however, considering the seriousness of the matter. After all, if convicted, the accused could face several years in prison and a seven-year ban from the country. This would be a drastic punishment, considering that almost his entire family now lives in Switzerland. Nevertheless, the prosecutor often mentioned this during his plea.

There is, however, no denying that the events of an evening in October 2020 could actually have been from a television progrtamme. A 32-year-old man living in Neuheim had to face the questions of the Criminal Court in Zug on Tuesday. Nenad K.* is accused of several offences. Thes include multiple endangerment of life, as well as offences against the Narcotics Act and the Weapons Act.

CHF 50,000 in debt
The most weighty and most extensively discussed point of the indictment was also the most obscure one. It seemed that both parties became entangled in contradictions in the course of the investigation. According to the indictment, the course of events was as follows:

On the evening in question, the accused Nenad K. arranged to meet Milan S.* in a municipality in Aargau. A discussion was said to have taken place there regarding a dispute of the previous day over CHF 50,000 that Nenad K. was supposed to owe Milan S.

At the meeting point, Nenad K. drove his car into a car wash compartment and was immediately blocked in by the car of Milan S., who then also entered the car wash compartment. Another man, Amir F.*, also got out of Milan S.'s car, but remained standing by the vehicle. Shortly afterwards, Nenad K. and Milan S. left the car wash again, whereupon the accused fired two shots from a pistol.

Both shots hit the asphalt half a metre to a metre away from the feet of Milan S. Amir F. was standing at a distance of about four and five metres away at the time. While the events outside the box were recorded by a surveillance camera, it is not clear what had happened inside.

The accused fired two shots from a pistol               Symbolic image: AP
He had to answer to the criminal court                    Photo: Werner Schelbert

He said he did not want to kill anyone
And this is where the confusion begins. On the day of the interrogation, Nenad K. claimed that he had shot in self-defence and under fear of death, because Milan S. had assaulted him in the car wash. One day after the shooting, however, the accused did not say a word about an attack. At that time, he had testified that the shots had been fired because he had wanted to persuade the two men to leave.

At the trial on Tuesday, he also affirmed that he had never intended to kill or injure anyone., He had therefore not aimed directly at Milan S., but towards the ground.

The statements of the alleged victim are also confusing. After the crime, Milan S. initially claimed not to know Nenad K. at all. It had been a chance meeting in Aargau. He later corrected this statement and admitted that he and Nenad K. were known to each other.

Claimed weapon was found at the Höllgrotten
According to the Nenad K., Milan S. had threatened him on the day before and on the day of the shooting. He would "hack him and his family to pieces" if he did not pay him back the CHF 50,000. It was this threat that prompted Nenad K. to bring the gun to the meeting. A weapon, it should be noted, that he was not allowed to possess. And this leads to another point in the indictment.

Nenad K. claims to have found the weapon in 2019 at the edge of the forest near the Höllgrotten in Baar, and to have hidden it in a bush at his home for a year or more. There, it was neither protected against access by third parties, nor did Nenad K. have a firearms licence that would allow him to possess the pistol. He is also not allowed to carry a weapon and/or shoot with it. Not reporting the find of the weapon is also a criminal offence, but it is now time-barred.

This could be the end of the indictments - but it isn’t. Nenad K. is accused of even more offences: the possession, sale and consumption of drugs. These accusations lead back to 2018, when the accused allegedly received 200 grams of a cocaine mixture, and then gave this to a third person unknown to him a little over a week later.

He kept the cocaine, together with a digital scale, in the roof lining of his company car, where it was found by the police in May 2018. Some of the drugs were apparently intended for his own consumption, but he is also alleged to have sold or given away a gram of cocaine mixture to a woman 21 times over a period of three years from 2016.

The trial on Tuesday ended after about four and a half hours. The public prosecutor is demanding a prison sentence of four years and one month, together with a fine of CHF 1,100 and a seven-year ban from the country. The last point in particular would be "a catastrophe" for the native Serb, since, as he stressed, he has had hardly anything to do with his home country. The sentencing was postponed until Thursday. Nenad K. is to be presumed innocent until then.

*Names changed by the editors.