Identity check reveals arrest warrant
Officers checked the German national's identity at about 10:20 p.m., the Nuremberg federal police inspectorate said Tuesday. Their records showed a European arrest warrant for murder and a corresponding alert in the wanted-persons system.
He offered no resistance. Police took him to their station and notified the authority in Cologne that had issued the warrant before he was returned to Bezirksklinikum Erlangen.
In a separate incident the previous weekend, police at Nuremberg's main station found two missing teenagers who disappeared again shortly afterward, according to inFranken.
Escape with 399 days left to serve
The Cologne Regional Court convicted the man in 2003 of murder in conjunction with robbery resulting in death. It imposed a four-year prison sentence, followed by commitment to a psychiatric hospital.
He escaped from Bezirksklinikum Erlangen on April 15, 2026. According to police, he still had 399 days of his prison sentence to serve at the time. The Cologne public prosecutor's office subsequently sought him under a European arrest warrant.
The forensic psychiatry department at Erlangen's Klinikum am Europakanal, where he had been held, accepts patients committed by court order. Its operator, Bezirkskliniken Mittelfranken, describes it as a forensic commitment facility and says commitment under Section 63 of the German Criminal Code has no fixed time limit.
An earlier escape from the Erlangen clinic
Another patient escaped from the Erlangen forensic clinic on August 16, 2025, after failing to return from an unaccompanied outing authorized by the clinic.
According to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, that patient was located in Colombia and brought back to Germany about two weeks after his escape. He was then returned to the Erlangen clinic's closed ward.
Bavaria's forensic commitment system
Bavaria's state parliament amended the Bavarian Forensic Commitment Act on November 13, 2025, with the changes taking effect December 1. The law requires special consideration of public protection when making prognostic assessments about placements. It also requires facilities to initiate the process of ending a placement once the legal conditions are met.
The Bavarian Office for Forensic Commitment, part of Zentrum Bayern Familie und Soziales, says the state has 14 forensic commitment facilities housing around 3,000 people. Bavaria pays the costs of placement; the budget totaled about 333 million euros in 2021.
