Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Paris thieves nab €100,000 from tourists in highway robbery

A Russian couple have been robbed of jewellery and luxury goods worth some €100,000 on a stretch of Parisian motorway that is growing notorious for robberies of the wealthy.

Published: 23 February 2017 08:27 CET
Paris thieves nab €100,000 from tourists in highway robbery
Photo: AFP
The couple were robbed on the A1 motorway north of the French capital on Tuesday night, a police source said, just after they landed at Paris' Le Bourget airport which is used by private jets.
   
Le Parisien newspaper reported that their chauffeur-driven car was pushed towards the motorway exit by another vehicle.
   
Three thieves seized their jewellery, clothes and other possessions, a police source said, with the value estimated at $105,000.
   
The stretch of motorway, which serves the Charles de Gaulle airport as well as Le Bourget, is the scene of regular robberies by thieves targeting wealthy visitors to Paris.
   
Two Qataris were robbed of five million euros while on their way into the city centre in November.
   
And a month earlier three thieves attacked a taxi that was carrying a businessman and his wife and made off with their luggage, at an estimated loss to the couple of 100,000 euros.
   
In August 2014, a gang of armed and masked men attacked a Saudi prince after his arrival at Le Bourget airport, stealing 250,000 euros and diplomatic documents.
 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

A 14-year-old girl has died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school locked down to protect itself from a knife attacker who lightly wounded two other girls, an official said on Friday.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:58 CEST
French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

The teenager “was rescued by teachers who were very fast to call the fire department. She died at the end of the afternoon,” education official Olivier Faron said.

The girl’s middle school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors on Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls aged 7 and 11 outside a nearby primary facility.

“Sadly this pupil underwent an episode of very high stress that led to a heart attack,” Faron said.

A mother outside the middle school on Friday morning said her son in first year of secondary had also been scared during the lockdown the previous day.

“Whereas in the primary school they made it more like a game, perhaps here it was a little too direct,” Deborah Wendling said.

“He thought there was an armed person in the school. They could hear doors slamming, but in fact it was just other classrooms locking down.”

Faron defended the teachers.

READ ALSO: Schoolgirl threatens teacher with knife as tensions rise in French schools

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

But “we will analyse in depth what happened. If there are lessons to be taken from this, we will take them.”

The two girls hurt in the attack were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening with only light wounds.

Police have arrested the 30-year-old assailant, and a probe has been opened into “attempted murder of minors”, the prosecutor’s office said.

It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but it did not appear to be “a terrorist act”, it said.

He was “psychiatrically fragile” and appeared to have stopped his medication.

The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools.

SHOW COMMENTS