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CRIME

Block thrown from bridge kills mother of two

A 33-year-old mother of two was killed on Sunday when an unknown person threw a wooden block from a motorway bridge. The block crashed through the windshield and hit the woman, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

Published: 24 March 2008 12:37 CET

Also traveling in the car were the victim’s husband and two children, aged seven and nine. They were not injured, but are suffering from severe shock.

The perpetrator fled the scene on the A29 motorway near Oldenburg in the German state of Lower Saxony. He is wanted for murder. The police have assigned 14 officers to the investigation and are working on the assumption that there was no relationship between the killer and the family.

According to the police, a similar incident occurred along the same stretch of the A29 several years ago when a stone crashed through the window of a moving vehicle. That time, there were no injuries as no one was sitting in the passenger seat.

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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