A trial witness has been reportedly found dead inside a toilet just three days after a court date.
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A 70-year-old man who was due to testify as a witness at a court in northern Germany was found dead in a toilet stall there three days after his appearance date, the Associated Press reports.
The judicial authorities had already taken the appropriate measures, Beate Flatow, the Kiel district court’s deputy president, said on Tuesday.
The man was due to give evidence in a trial on October 29, but his body was not discovered until November 1 in a locked toilet stall. An autopsy showed that he had probably died from a heart attack, a spokesman for the Kiel public prosecutor said on Tuesday.
“The guard on duty will check all publicly accessible rooms, especially the toilets, every day in the future,” Flatow said. “The cleaners believed that there had been another burst pipe and that the stall had been sealed off for safety reasons.”
The man was due to testify in the trial of a man who stands accused of staging car accidents. The judge cancelled the trial when the defendant did not turn up, the local newspaper Kieler Nachrichten reported, citing a court spokeswoman.
When the witness was called, it also appeared that he was not there. The court tried to contact him over the following days by telephone, without success.