Smashed nose bone, tongue amputated, lower and upper jaw fractured several times, half of the face separated from the skull. Ten teeth out, teething misaligned, facial nerves severed, tongue numb. These are just the most serious injuries sustained by a 44-year-old man from the Ruhr area after a man in a pink ball gown jumped on his back in front of the Sonderbar in the Old Town on 3 September around 11 pm.
The offender lost a pink ballet skirt while on the run
Andreas Müller, who does not want to make his real name public out of concern, fell like a felled tree with his face on the pavement. The author, who wore a pink shirt and black cap in addition to a pink ballroom skirt, fled.
The 44-year-old immediately after the fact
Two months after the brutal attack, Müller looks better than he is. A dark shadow can be seen under his right eye, he wears a temporary prosthesis and can only open his mouth a little.
After a six-hour operation in the university clinic, in which the jaws were straightened and several plates were used for stabilization, he was able to swallow liquid food only through a catheter: the jaws had been stitched so that they did not could open his mouth. “I hope someday I’ll be able to move my mouth normally again,” he says.
The jaws were sewn together.
September 3 was a hot late summer day. Müller had gone with his friend Peter Engels (even the name changed) to the Jeck summer carnival festival in Sunnesching, saying it was a “wonderful and turbulent day” in the Deutz youth park. Müller and Engler are called “Herzenskölner” – they have a season ticket for 1. FC Köln, they love music and the Cologne carnival, even in summer.
Friends still wanted to eat spit-roulades
Around 10 pm, the two returned to their hotel in Heumarkt and wanted to eat a spit sandwich in the old town. In front of the strange bar was a group of three bachelors, Engler recalls, all between 35 and 40 years old.
“One was wearing this pink dress, the other two black T-shirts with two words written on them.” Men can no longer remember what was on the shirts. “But it looked like the man in the pink suit was the bachelor, the groom-to-be.”
homophobic insult
“After you, do you want to see some real cocks?” one of the men yelled. “We wondered rather perplexedly: what’s the matter with you? And we wanted to move on. We noticed that they were aggressive and didn’t want to fight.” Müller points out that he didn’t drink much that day.
“We were very relaxed and wanted to end the evening with something to eat. But they haven’t stopped screaming. The friends continued on to the Rhine.
Jumped behind with a running start
Shortly thereafter, the two men in black T-shirts who had started the chase found themselves in front of them again. They would have mistreated, pushed, even hit. Andreas Müller can’t remember what happened next. He felt a dull ache in his back and fell to the ground. “The guy in the pink suit, a strong and fit guy, maybe 100 pounds, met him on his back,” says Engler.
After the dull impact, Müller bled from the mouth, nose and ears. A nurse who was on site provided him with basic care until the police and ambulance arrived. The author with the pink tutu ran away. He lost his suit in front of the beer museum.
“The doctors told me I was lucky I wasn’t brought home horizontally in a black car,” says Müller. “The people in Münster weren’t that lucky.”
Malte C., a 25-year-old trans man who was crushed on the sidelines of the CSD in Münster after helping a woman who was homophobically assaulted, fell on the street and died of serious injuries. He was the worst of numerous brutal attacks with a homophobic background, some of them in Cologne.
“Of course the boys were anti-gay”
Andreas Müller is not homosexual. He ran around town with his friend dressed in an Aloha necklace and a colorful Hawaiian shirt. “Obviously the boys were anti-gay, grotesque as it is: they wore a pink ballet suit and then went crazy in such a homophobic way,” says Müller. However, the cause of the inhuman attack is very secondary to him.
The 44-year-old was operated on twice in the university clinic, “at least ten plates” stabilized his face. To this day, he still has headaches when he bends over and regular earaches. Part of the face and the cut tongue are numb. He does physiotherapy to be able to move his mouth better again – right now he can barely chew, he only eats soft foods “and I tend to swallow that too.”
In the wrong place at the wrong time
He can’t do his job, he’s on sick leave and living on sickness – “I don’t know yet how I’m going to raise the money for the new teeth and everything to come.” She contacted the White Ring Victim Support Association, which immediately offered help. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time that day,” says Müller. “For me, it’s about getting my old life back. One day I’d like to be able to eat a spit-roulade again.” Above all, she says, “it would be nice if the culprits were found.”
Cologne police are investigating and receiving suggestions on 0221 / 229-0 or by email at [email protected].
