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Car thieves discover dead baby

Four young car thieves in the western German state of Saarland notified the police on Sunday night after they stumbled on the corpse of a small baby in the boot of a car they were breaking into.

Published: 6 February 2012 14:48 CET
Updated: 6 February 2012 15:54 CET

Car thieves discover dead baby

The spot where the car was. Photo: DPA

The thieves – three men and a woman aged between 19 and 28 – alerted the authorities after breaking into a car in search of valuables and finding the body of a baby inside a rucksack.

“We’re assuming it was there for quite awhile,” said police spokesman Georg Himbert.

The small red car was parked on some land next to a petrol station in the small town of Merzig, and was apparently up for sale, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Monday.

The ownership of the vehicle was tracked down to a 23-year-old woman who reportedly admitted that she was the mother of the dead child.

She is currently being interrogated by police. An autopsy on the baby is also being carried out.

Police are hoping the autopsy will determine whether the baby was still-born or was killed.

The Local/DPA/bk

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German prosecutors drop investigation into 'unforeseeable' flood disaster

The public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz has closed the investigation into the deadly flood disaster in the Ahr valley that occurred in the summer of 2021.

A sufficient suspicion against the former Ahr district administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU) and an employee from the crisis team has not arisen, announced the head of the public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz, Mario Mannweiler, on Thursday.

Following the flood disaster in the Ahr region in Rhineland-Palatinate – in which 136 people died in Germany and thousands of homes were destroyed – there were accusations that the district of Ahrweiler, with Pföhler at the helm, had acted too late in sending flood warnings.

An investigation on suspicion of negligent homicide in 135 cases began in August of 2021. Pföhler had always denied the allegations.

READ ALSO: UPDATE – German prosecutors consider manslaughter probe into deadly floods

The public prosecutor’s office came to the conclusion that it was an extraordinary natural disaster: “The 2021 flood far exceeded anything people had experienced before and was subjectively unimaginable for residents, those affected, emergency services and those responsible for operations alike,” the authority said.

Civil protections in the district of Ahrweiler, including its disaster warning system, were found to be insufficient.

READ ALSO: Germany knew its disaster warning system wasn’t good enough – why wasn’t it improved?

But from the point of view of the public prosecutor’s office, these “quite considerable deficiencies”, which were identified by an expert, did not constitute criminal liability.

Why did the case take so long?

The investigations had dragged on partly because they were marked by considerable challenges, said the head of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Criminal Police Office, Mario Germano. “Namely, to conduct investigations in an area marked by the natural disaster and partially destroyed. Some of the people we had to interrogate were severely traumatised.”

More than 300 witnesses were heard including firefighters, city workers and those affected by the flood. More than 20 terabytes of digital data had been secured and evaluated, and more than 300 gigabytes were deemed relevant to the proceedings.

Pföhler, who stopped working as the district administrator in August 2021 due to illness, stepped down from the role in October 2021 citing an incapacity for duty.

The conclusion of the investigation had been postponed several times, in part because the public prosecutor’s office wanted to wait for the outcome of the investigative committee in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament.

READ ALSO: Volunteer army rebuilds Germany’s flood-stricken towns

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