German court finds 58-year-old lorry driver guilty of charges relating to hundreds of shootings along highway

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A court in Germany has sentenced a lorry driver to 10 and a half years in prison for shooting at fellow drivers more than 700 times over a five-year period.

In one incident a driver was hit in the neck by a ricochet but survived.

The case of the “autobahn sniper” baffled police until last year, when they placed number-plate scanners along the highway and compared all vehicles that passed with the times of the shootings.

The 58-year-old man was found guilty on Thursday of four counts of attempted murder, grievous bodily harm and dangerous interference with traffic. German news agency dpa reported that he admitted to the shootings but claimed not to have wanted to hurt anybody.

The regional court in Würzburg did not publish the man’s name, in line with German privacy rules.