Died in his bed

14-year-old girl dead: man on trial for drug addiction

The girl's body was found in this apartment in Vienna-Simmering.

(Bild: Klemens Groh, Krone KREATIV)

A 14-year-old girl from Lower Austria was found dead in March in the apartment of a then 26-year-old man in Vienna-Simmering. At the time, the authorities communicated to the outside world that, unlike in the Leonie case, the man was neither suspected of violating the Narcotics Act nor of committing a sexual offense. Today, the Afghan is on trial after all.

The criminal complaint from the Vienna public prosecutor's office is not for sexual abuse, but for an offense under the Narcotics Act. According to this, the now 27-year-old is alleged to have given the 14-year-old girl narcotics in addition to using them himself. The accused faces up to three years in prison.

Overdose as the cause of death
The man forgot his previous conviction for attempted theft in court. He states that he has no criminal record. And the day on which the girl died is not an issue in the trial either. Instead, an incident a few days earlier when he had met the deceased: she had approached him in Landstraßer Hauptstraße: "Do you have anything? I urgently need a joint," she had said to him - he had then handed the girl some cannabis in his apartment. "I'm really sorry about what happened. But it's not my fault because of this girl. She only smoked a small piece of cannabis," he asserts.

From the penal code

Anyone who enables a minor to use narcotics by committing an offense and who is of legal age and more than two years older than the minor is liable to a prison sentence of up to three years.

Tragedy struck on the night of March 4. The previous evening, the young Lower Austrian woman returned to the home of the Afghan, who had fled to Austria in 2015, speaks German and is employed. That night, the teenager died of an overdose in his bed. At the time, he stated that there had been consensual sexual intercourse with the minor. In Austria, consensual sexual intercourse with over-14-year-olds is generally permitted.

When the defendant in Landl begins to talk about the incident, the judge surprisingly blocks it immediately: "I'll say stop now!" That was not the point. Nonetheless, the 27-year-old keeps on saying: "I'm sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before." And: "I don't want anyone to know that a girl died at my place." He claims not to have known anything about the girl's young age: "She was taller than me. I didn't check her ID. I thought she was 18." - At the police station, he had testified that she had said she was 15 or 16 years old.

Adjourned for unknown witness
Because there is allegedly a witness who was present when the girl approached him, the trial has been adjourned until Monday. The man and his friend are to appear in court again then. Whether he will actually bring him with him is questionable.