As reported by Total Croatia News, in September last year, Austrian citizen Harald Kopitz was arrested by Croatian police in Zagreb for the murder of his three children.
Harald and his wife were divorced, and she left her children to spend the weekend with their father while she was on a business trip down in Dubrovnik. On the night of September 25, following a worrying Facebook status posted by Kopitz that was later reported by his contacts, Zagreb police entered Harald’s apartment only to find the dead bodies of the children and their father in a critical condition after having attempted to take his own life.
Harald Kopitz, an Austrian citizen residing in Zagreb, was arrested by the police for the alleged murder of his three children, which was later confirmed. In the Facebook status he posted, Kopitz wrote something of a farewell letter, noting that his ex-wife thwarted their love and that his job situation was not improving. In addition, he stressed that he did not receive the necessary support and that he was ”at the end”. The worrying post caught the attention of his contacts, who reported it to the police. You can read the full story here.
As Index.hr reported on February 23rd, the State Attorney’s Office (DORH) filed an indictment against Harald Kopitz for the murder of his three children.
“Following an investigation, the Zagreb County State’s Attorney’s Office filed an indictment before the Zagreb County Court on 23 February 2022 against a citizen of the Republic of Austria (1965) for three offenses against life and limb and three aggravated murders under Article 111, Items 1 and 2 in conjunction with Article 51 of the Criminal Code.
The indictment charges the defendant with the following: That on September 24, 2021, at around 22:00 in Zagreb, in the apartment where he was staying with his three minor children (2013, 2013 and 2016), with a premeditated intention to deprive the children of their lives, Kopitz took advantage of the children’s trust in him as a father and committed the aforementioned criminal offenses to the detriment of the children. In the indictment, the Zagreb County State’s Attorney’s Office requested that the defendant’s pre-trial detention be extended until the end of the criminal proceedings due to the danger of recidivism and the particularly serious circumstances surrounding committing this criminal offense (Article 123, paragraph 1, items 3 and 4 of the criminal proceedings)”, announced the DORH.
Let us remind you that Kopitz took the lives of his three children in the Zagreb neighbourhood of Mlinovi at the end of September 2021, and then tried to take his own life. He was sentenced to pre-trial detention.
As reported today by Slobodna Dalmacija, the Harald Kopitz trial will be held tomorrow at Zagreb County Court. Kopitz has been charged with three counts of aggravated murder and faces up to 50 years in prison.
The media wrote that Kopitz lived and worked in Zagreb, where he had his own companies, and that he worked for several large companies as a financial consultant and negotiator. The mother of the murdered children was working in a hotel in Dubrovnik, and the children were with their father over the weekend.
An expert examination conducted at the Hospital for Persons Deprived of Liberty established that Kopitz could be held accountable at the time of the crime, and the trial will be closed to the public.
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