20-Year-Old Gas Station Clerk Shot in Head After Asking Customer to Mask Up

A young student working as a gas station cashier in Germany was shot and killed after declining to sell beer to a customer who refused to mask up, prosecutors said. The Saturday evening killing in the town of Idar-Oberstein came after an unmasked 49-year-old man entered the station, placing two six-packs of beer on the counter. The 20-year-old clerk asked him to put on a mask. The customer refused and left, but returned an hour later, wearing a mask that he pulled down to address the cashier. When the attendant again insisted on the mask, the man pulled out an unlicensed firearm and shot him in the head.

The man, who had no prior runs ins with police, later gave himself up. He told officers that the murder had been prompted by COVID-related stress, and that he saw the clerk as “responsible for the situation because he was enforcing the rules,” Kai Fuhrmann, the district attorney for the case, said in an interview with The New York Times.