The 2020 Solingen killings occurred on 3 September 2020, at 11:45 a.m. local time, when a 27-year-old mother, Christiane K., killed five of her six children in an apartment in the Hasseldelle district of
Solingen, a city in
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The children, aged one, two, three, six and eight, were sedated with large doses of medications and then either drowned or suffocated. Prior to the killings, the eldest sixth child, an 11-year-old boy, had been sent by the woman to stay with his grandmother, who alerted the authorities.
The motive for the woman's murders was attributed to her discovery of a photograph of her former partner with his new romantic interest. In response to this discovery, the woman wrote to him that he would never see his children again. After the killings, the woman attempted
suicide by jumping in front of a train at the
Düsseldorf train station, but survived with serious injuries.
In a ruling by an expert appointed by the court, it was determined that the woman did not suffer from a serious mental illness, though she has been diagnosed with
narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, a diminished ability or unwillingness to empathize with other ...
.
The
Wuppertal court found the mother guilty and sentenced her to
life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...
, citing the aggravated nature of the crime, which typically precludes the possibility of
parole after 15 years, otherwise a common outcome in similar cases in Germany.
See also
*
Hanau shootings
References
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