What makes a hunter run amok tick

The gunman left his two hunting dogs behind

Roland Drexler also recently had an apartment in this 12-party house opposite the school in Altenfelden.

(Bild: Wenzel Markus)

Roland Drexler's neighbors wonder why the police came to the apartment of the wanted gunman from Altenfelden late after the crime on Monday morning. However, the hunter has several addresses. The 56-year-old had also previously been politically active in the town.

"The police didn't arrive for hours, we all had messages on our cell phones that something had happened," says a neighbor in the apartment building on Schulstrasse in Altenfelden, wondering why the police hadn't knocked on the door on the second floor right away. But she wasn't and isn't afraid, has known Roland Drexler for a long time and became his neighbor again by chance about two months ago. Suddenly he was standing in the stairwell.

Had several addresses
The fact that the 56-year-old had three addresses after the divorce and the loss of the house - the apartment in the village, two rooms including a garage (where he stored the deer feed) in a village just outside the village and the one at his new partner's in Pfarrkirchen - only caused limited surprise among acquaintances: "You don't store deer feed in the village."

I was surprised that Roli was now living here in the house. He had been here for maybe two months, but I hadn't seen him much.

Nachbarin und langjährige Bekannte von Roland Drexler im Wohnhaus in Altenfelden

18 cats are said to have disappeared
And when the police searched the residences, they came across a surprise: the two hunting dogs of the wanted man had been left behind. The passionate hunter had loved them dearly, but his dog breeding methods, which he had practiced in the past, were controversial. His behavior in the hunting ground was also controversial: a resident of Altenfelden says that 18 cats disappeared after the 56-year-old took over hunting in his neighborhood.

"He hasn't made any kind of appearance in our area so far. This means that he has neither a criminal record nor has he been reported to the police," says Ulrike Breiteneder, spokesperson for the Linz public prosecutor's office.

The suspected murderer was registered behind this door on the second floor.

(Bild: Wenzel Markus)

In politics in the early 2000s
Roland Drexler was also politically active, sitting on the Altenfelden local council as SPÖ parliamentary group leader and local party chairman in the early 2000s. According to his successor, the doctor Walter Haslmair, he left the local council "around 18 years ago" and has not been politically active since then.

"As a hunter and dog owner, he already had problems back then," says Haslmair. His wife, in turn, is a doctor in Kirchberg/Donau. Her practice is on the second floor of the municipal office - right above the office of the murdered village chief Franz Hofer.