Shots at the Red Light - Millerntorplatz

About this place

Millerntorplatz is where Hamburg ends and St. Pauli begins. For centuries the Millerntor gate stood here, locked every night until the end of 1860, and beyond it ropemakers twisted ships' rigging along the straight track that became the Reeperbahn, Germany's most famous nightlife street. Today taxis, party buses and football fans heading for the Millerntor stadium of FC St. Pauli crowd the junction, while the Dancing Towers lean over the start of the Sinful Mile. Late on the night of 26 August 2018, this busy crossing became a crime scene. As a white Bentley waited at the red light, a silver Mercedes pulled up alongside and five shots were fired from its passenger seat at the driver, a leading figure of the Hamburg Hells Angels. A passing police patrol helped save his life, but he was left paralysed. The Hamburg Regional Court later found that a former member of the rival Mongols club had instigated the attack from his prison cell as revenge for an earlier shooting, and called it an attempted murder with the character of an execution. He was sentenced to life, and his girlfriend, who drove the car, to twelve and a half years. The man who fired the shots has never been identified, which leaves the shooting at the red light only half solved.

Key facts

• 5 shots — Fired from the passenger seat of a silver Mercedes at the white Bentley as it waited at the red light on 26 August 2018.
• 12.5 years in prison — The sentence for the 24-year-old getaway driver; her jailed boyfriend, who instigated the attack, was sentenced to life on 3 June 2019.
• 930 metres — The length of the Reeperbahn, the old ropemakers' track that starts at this junction and runs west to the Nobistor.

Hear it on a guided audio walk