According to the official report, at around 1.30 am the police received a call from a witness who had noticed a smell of burning metal coming from a bank in the Ossendorf district of Cologne. The caller had also noticed a person in the area who appeared to be standing watch.
Police arrived with a dog and found a 27-year-old woman on the scene with her son. the woman said she had arranged to meet her husband there.
The woman claimed to have no knowledge of her husband's whereabouts at the time but Laika, a police dog, soon tracked him down.
Police caught the man red handed, beside a safe in the cellar of the bank, alongside a number of power tools.
The 32-year-old had managed to get into the cellar by cutting his way through a barred window before using various power tools, such as an angle grinder and drill, to “work” on the safe, causing the burning smell.
Although the 27-year-old woman claimed not to have known where her husband was, police found a text on the 11-year-old boy's phone from his father saying quite simply that he couldn't get out of the “hole” because there was a dog there, which proved that the whole family was complicit.
The man, who is already known to police, is currently awaiting trial at a detention centre. His wife will be charged too.
The local Youth Welfare Office has also been informed about the 11-year-old's involvement in his family's late-night criminal activities.
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