Ian Cameron, 74, was attacked with a knife on July 12 and fatally wounded. A 22-year-old Serbian national was identified as the prime suspect based on information from the public, Germany’s Fürstenfeldbruck police department said. The suspect is believed to have fled the region via Munich, then Innsbruck and Zurich to France, where he was found in an apartment in Aubervilliers, northeast of Paris, and arrested on Thursday morning by a special unit of the French police in coordination with the German Federal Police. Security forces from Serbia, Austria and Switzerland were involved in the operation, The Guardian reports.
Europol, the EU police agency, said it was an operation “that demonstrates the power of international police cooperation” which it coordinated. The suspect will be extradited to Germany to face charges. Germany’s Bild newspaper reported that the knife believed to have been used in the killing was found in the woods near Cameron’s mansion in the town of Hersching on Lake Ammer and is being examined for DNA evidence. When he was arrested, the suspect had only 200 euros on him. Cameron’s wife was at home during the attack and managed to escape by running to neighbours and calling police. The attacker is believed to have fled on foot.
“We are assuming that the perpetrator and the victim did not know each other,” Fürstenfeldbruck police chief Manfred Frei told German media, adding that the possibility of a contract killing cannot be ruled out. Investigators released CCTV footage of a bearded man buying gloves at a local supermarket, as well as photographs of the suspect wearing a blue hoodie and carrying a red backpack. Police said they received more than 80 tips from citizens. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that the decisive information came from a witness in Munich who recognised the suspect in photographs and knew his name. Cameron left Rolls-Royce in 2013 after serving as the company’s chief designer and working on several luxury car models.
