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German killed in Danish stone-throwing ‘murder’

Police on the Danish island of Funen are treating a fatal stone-throwing incident as murder after a German tourist lost her life on a local motorway.

Published: 22 August 2016 12:54 CEST

German killed in Danish stone-throwing ‘murder’

Police said that the sheer size of the stone leads them to believe that it may have been planned in advance. Photo: Fyns Politi

Funen Police said that a 30 kilo stone tile and a 9.5 kilo cobblestone were thrown from an overpass onto a moving vehicle early on Sunday morning.

The car belonged to a German family that was returning from holiday. The female passenger was killed instantly while the driver of the vehicle, a 36-year-old man, was seriously injured. The couple’s five-year-old son, who was seated next to his mother in the back seat, escaped injury.

A police spokesman told broadcaster DR that the case will be investigated as a murder and attempted murder.

“When one takes such heavy tiles and throws them down on cars moving at such high speeds, it has to be with the thought that someone could die,” Commissioner Michael Lichtenstein said.

Lichtenstein said that the sheer size of the tile leads police to believe that one or more adults were involved.

“These stones are so heavy that they’re not something you’d just come strolling with under your arm. So this is perhaps something that was planned,” he told DR.

Funen Police said that the German consulate has been called to Odense University Hospital to take care of the five-year-old child until family members arrive from Germany. Police said that they would not release more information on the German victims until family members have confirmed their identities.

Police are asking anyone who might have leads in the case to call 114.

Four teenagers detained in Germany over 'Islamist attack' plot

Three were arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia state, who are “strongly suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated terror attack and of having committed to carrying it out”, Düsseldorf prosecutors said in a statement.

The trio had also “committed to carrying out a crime — murder and manslaughter”, Düsseldorf prosecutors added.

Separately, prosecutors in Stuttgart said a 16-year-old suspect is in custody on “suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime endangering the state”.

Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, said the group had discussed their plans in telephone chats.

Mobile phones seized by police showed chats discussing the western German cities of Dortmund, Duesseldorf and Cologne as possible locations for attacks, while churches and synagogues were named as targets, said Reul.

The young age of the suspects left Reul “speechless”, with the minister adding it posed a “huge challenge for society as a whole”.

Investigators did not provide further details on the alleged plot, saying the inquiry was still underway.

But Germany’s biggest-selling daily Bild reported that the youths were allegedly planning to carry out Molotov cocktail and knife attacks in the name of the Islamic State group.

Their targets are believed to be Christians and police officers, according to the report, which said the suspects were also weighing whether to obtain firearms.

READ ALSO: How does Germany warn people about the threat of terrorist attacks?

Germany has been on high alert for Islamist attacks since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October, with the country’s domestic intelligence chief warning that the risk of such assaults is “real and higher than it has been for a long time”.

The country is also particularly nervous about security breaches as it prepares to host the European football championships from mid-June to mid-July.

‘Danger remains acute’

Police had already foiled a suspected plot earlier this year.

Investigators in January arrested three people over an alleged plan targeting the cathedral in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

Bild reported that the suspects were Tajiks acting for Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the same group believed to have been behind March’s deadly massacre in a Moscow concert hall.

“The danger from Islamist terrorism remains acute,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said at the time, describing the Khorasan offshoot as “currently the biggest Islamist threat in Germany”.

Islamist extremists have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

More recently, two Afghans linked to IS were arrested in Germany in March on suspicion of planning an attack around Sweden’s parliament in retaliation for Koran burnings.

In October, German prosecutors also charged two Syrian brothers for planning an attack inspired by IS on a church in Sweden.

READ ALSO: Two men held in Germany over Swedish parliament terror plot

In December 2022, a Syrian-born Islamist was jailed for 14 years for a knife attack on a train in Bavaria in which four people were injured.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell from 28,290 in 2021 to 27,480 in 2022, according to a report from the BfV federal domestic intelligence agency.

However, in presenting the report, Faeser said Islamist extremism “remains dangerous”.

Germany became a target for jihadist groups during its involvement in the coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and its deployment in Afghanistan.

By Hui Min Neo

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