A 17-year-old Ukrainian young basketball player was stabbed to death in a dispute between young people at Oberhausen main train station on Saturday evening. His 18-year-old teammate, who also comes from Ukraine, as well as a fourteen-year-old Syrian and a 13-year-old German-Lebanese woman were seriously injured.
The murder squad set up at the Essen police headquarters was able to arrest two suspects in Gelsenkirchen and Herne on Sunday. An arrest warrant for manslaughter was issued against a 15-year-old German-Turkish man from Gelsenkirchen; the suspicion could not be substantiated against a 14-year-old German-Greek man from Herne, the investigators said. The two have “already made a significant appearance in criminal investigations”.
According to the police’s previous findings, the young people initially had a verbal argument on a bus on the way to downtown Oberhausen. After getting off at the main train station, the conflict escalated.
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The fatality was Volodymyr Yermakov, who played for the Düsseldorf Art Giants in the U-19 Basketball Bundesliga. He only moved to Düsseldorf in July 2023 to escape the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, as the club announced. While the Ukrainian Basketball Association suspected that the young athlete had been stabbed because of his Ukrainian origins, his Düsseldorf club said: “We cannot make any statement about the exact reasons for the cause of Volodymyr’s death at this point in time.” The homicide commission said: ” The investigation into the reasons behind the crime is in full swing.”