Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CRIME

Mother kills her three children with BBQ fumes

A mother is believed to have killed her three children and attempted to take her own life through carbon monoxide poisoning by lighting two barbecues in a bedroom.

Published: 6 May 2014 14:51 CEST

Mother kills her three children with BBQ fumes

Forensics investigating the murder scene on Tuesday. Photo: DPA

The bodies of a three-year-old girl and two boys aged four and 11, were found at a house in Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, on Monday afternoon.

The mother’s brother called police after he found the three dead children in their parents’ bedroom. The 39-year-old mother was found unconscious alongside her children but was resuscitated by paramedics. Help came too late for her children, however.

Officers also found two charcoal barbecues in the room – the source of the carbon monoxide.

“The woman cannot yet be questioned,” inspector Ulrich Bux from Münster police said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “Her relatives are being cared for and forensic investigations are ongoing.”

Prosecutor Stefan Lechtape said: “From our investigations so far we assume that the 39-year-old woman wanted to kill her three children and herself. She left a suicide note and put a note in the hallway warning of carbon monoxide.”

The biological father of the three-year-old girl and four-year-old boy is currently serving a prison sentence, police said. The 11-year-old son was from a previous relationship.

SEE ALSO: Three dead at Berlin tower block

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

Url copied to clipboard!