AKIPRESS.COM - Three people are going on trial in the German city of Essen for failing to assist a pensioner who had collapsed after entering a bank cashpoint, BBCreported citing German media.

The 83-year-old man died a week later, having hit his head on the tiles. A fourth person had also ignored the pensioner, but is reportedly ill. Medics were only alerted by the fifth customer on the scene.

The customers were identified in CCTV footage, which showed them stepping round the critically ill pensioner. Under German law, failure to respond to a medical emergency is punishable by a fine or up to a year in jail.

In most cases a fine is agreed out of court between defence lawyers and prosecutors, the German news website Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. The law requires people at least to alert emergency services, if they lack first aid skills.

The incident - at a Deutsche Bank branch in Essen, in the western, industrial Ruhr region - has triggered anguished debate in Germany.

Some argued that it symbolised a coarsening of society, with many people indifferent to their fellow citizens' welfare.

The accused are a 55-year-old man from Oberhausen, a woman aged 39 from Essen and a man aged 21 from Essen.

It took 20 minutes for the pensioner to get first aid.

Two of the accused are quoted as saying they believed the pensioner to be a homeless man. Some homeless people did use the cashpoint as a shelter at the time, as it was accessible without a bank card.

However, a prosecutor was sceptical about that argument, saying the customers would have seen that the man was well dressed, lying in the middle of the room and had no bags of belongings or sleeping bag.

The Essen prosecutor, Birgit Jürgens, said "I've never experienced anything like this". She has been working in the state prosecutor's office since 1991.