Homeless man lives in train station locker for nine years

A homeless man in Germany has been jailed after living for the past nine years in a left-luggage locker at a railway station.

Mike Konrad, 29, called locker 501 at Duesseldorf station his home for almost a decade. Every evening since he walked out on his girlfriend in 1999 he has gone feet-first to bed, crawling into the 50cm by 60cm metal locker to sleep in a space meant to be reserved for passengers' suitcases.

He had been ejected from his unlikely bed by station security staff 200 times and the authorities finally decided to take action and prosecute him for trespassing.

Mr Konrad said in court that he had been locked in the locker by youths "more times than I can remember" and had to rely on station staff to free him.

"I always went to sleep in it with the door slightly ajar," he told a court in the Rhineland city. "But kids liked to lock me in for a laugh." The two euros it cost him to open the locker was normally refunded by the machine in the morning if the door wasn't closed, he said.

A judge sentenced him to nine months in jail. But Mr Konrad's lawyer argued that he belonged in care, not jail, so the judge ordered that he undergo a full medical assessment to determine whether he is fit to remain incarcerated.