Grossly negligent homicide and willful endangerment of the community through communicable diseases. The evidence is tenuous
In Austria, a woman is being investigated for grossly negligent homicide. Her murder weapon: a stairwell.
The woman from Carinthia was in quarantine in December 2021 due to a positive corona test. But she didn’t take it very seriously and occasionally left the apartment.
Shortly thereafter, a pensioner from the same apartment building caught the virus. He died in a hospital in January 2022.
“The suspicion was that he had been infected when he met the neighbor, for example in the stairwell,” writes the daily newspaper today.
Now the woman is under investigation.
The allegation: grossly negligent killing and intentional endangerment of the community through communicable diseases. It is the first case of this art in Austria.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to predict the problems in a possible process. The pensioner moved about freely, nothing is known about his lifestyle. It is difficult to prove that he was infected by the neighbor. Especially since, according to scientific findings, a fleeting encounter in the stairwell is hardly enough for a transmission.
Blaming her for his death will be even harder. Because the medical history, including any previous illnesses, of the deceased is also unknown.
Austria is currently debating lifting the quarantine obligation. It’s a tightrope between alarmists and pragmatists. The case from Carinthia is therefore not only a legal one, but a political one.
If the duty remains, it would become much more unpleasant in the case of a trial or even a guilty verdict in the future. Anyone who is in quarantine would then probably be under more surveillance by the police than suspected criminals.