Thursday, August 1, 2019

That Frankfurt Murder

Focus, the German news magazine picks up the Frankfurt railway station murder (from Monday), and discusses what friends and associates of the accused (an Eritrean guy who'd settled in Switzerland back in the 2006 period)....have said about him.

Associates of the guy had seen his behavior change over the summer of 2018.  In simple terms, he was showing paranoid schizophrenia.....imagining people or things that simply weren't happening.  In this guy's case, he was also hearing voices.

Over the decades of my life, traveling a good bit and knowing a wide range of people....I often to people who'd had severe stress going on, and they were beginning to show signs of schizophrenia.  I'm not a mental health expert or engaged in the science....but I reached a point where I thought this was a 'release' mechanism that they'd activate to handle the stress.  The problem is....it just made matters worse in the end.  Even if they got treatment for problem 'A', this problem 'B' situation would require medication, and that usually didn't resolve much except create a whole fresh problem.

So what happened on this platform as the train began to arrive.....this Swiss-Eritrean guy who'd run off from Zurich because of a violent encounter with the neighbor....felt some paranoia, and probably heard some type of inner voice suggest pushing the mother, and the kid.

What'll happen in this case?  I think the German doctors will just come to agree that the guy is loaded up to the max with schizophrenia.  Having a court case won't resolve much, and they will eventually (probably after January) come to agree that simply housing him in a maximum security mental facility is the safest thing at this point.

I know.....the guy ought to face murder or attempted murder charges.  But if he's of the 'nutcase' category, what good does it do?  Should the Zurich folks have realized this in 2018?  Maybe, but I get the impression that this 'chat' will never occur.

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