(Berlin, DEU) - A defendant accused of embezzlement shot dead a prosecutor at a court in the southern German city of Dachau Wednesday, a spokesman for the state justice ministry said.
The man, 54, fired three shots at the prosecutor at the local district court and the 31-year-old victim later succumbed to his wounds in hospital, said the spokesman, Wilfried Krames.
A police spokesman, Peter Griesser, said the gunman was detained at the scene and that he had no information about other victims.
"We must see if he shot at other people but according to what we know, no one else was injured," the spokesman said.
"Several witnesses to the shooting are suffering from shock."
A spokesman for the Munich public prosecutor's office, Ken Heidenreich, said the defendant was accused of embezzling 44,000 euros ($55,800) in employee contributions that should have gone into the German healthcare and pension system.
A local daily, TZ, said the victim had only begun working for the prosecutor's office one year ago and was shot in the arm, shoulder and abdomen.
It was unclear how the defendant smuggled a gun into the courthouse, Heidenreich said.
German courts often have relatively lax security measures, particularly when cases not involving felonies are being heard.
In April 2009, a 60-year-old gunman killed a female family member and then himself at a courthouse hearing over an inheritance dispute in the southern city of Landshut.
And in July of the same year, a German man stabbed and killed a pregnant headscarved Egyptian woman in the eastern city of Dresden in a case which also provoked outrage in the Muslim world.
The killer, Alex Wiens, was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
