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CRIME

Autobahn motorist again targeted by falling debris

Only days after a German woman was killed after someone threw a wood block onto her car from an Autobahn overpass, a motorist in the Ruhr Valley avoided injury in a similar incident.

Published: 27 March 2008 08:23 CET
Autobahn motorist again targeted by falling debris
The car involved in the first deadly incident. Photo: dpa

A stone thrown from a bridge over the A2 motorway near Castrop-Rauxel in North Rhine-Westphalia left a fist-sized indentation in the windscreen of the car, the police said on Thursday.

The incident, which occurred late on Wednesday evening, left the driver shaken but remained uninjured. The authorities are now investigating what appears to be a copycat crime.

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.

The perpetrator, who is now wanted for murder, fled the scene on the A29 motorway near Oldenburg in the German state of Lower Saxony. He is wanted for murder.

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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