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CRIME

Police shoot axe-wielding maniac to free teenage hostage

Armed police officers shot a mentally-ill man several times after he injured a 13-year-old boy with an axe.

Published: 1 May 2009 12:28 CEST

Officers in Borchen near Paderborn, North-Rhine Westphalia, were called to the incident on Friday morning after the 47-year-old man grabbed the boy near a bakery and hurt him with the axe.

The five officers demanded that he drop the axe, and when the agitated man refused, sprayed him with pepper spray – but he still did not let go of the weapon or the boy.

When they shot him in the leg, the boy ran away, but the man still refused to let go of the axe and they shot him again, hitting him with several bullets.

Despite his multiple wounds, the man was not fatally injured, and was taken to the hospital for treatment. The boy was also treated in hospital for wounds he suffered from the axe.

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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