Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Aachen 7-year-old steals €500 from his granny

A 7-year-old child in Aachen lifted his grandmother’s bank card and stole €500 to distribute to his friends, according to police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Published: 30 July 2008 09:24 CEST
Aachen 7-year-old steals €500 from his granny
Photo: DPA

The boy said he stole the money because he wanted to be like his grandmother and go shopping too, police reported on Tuesday evening. The boy also said he wanted to make his friends happy with the cash.

The boy told police that he had already known his granny’s PIN number when he pilfered the cash.

He bought sweets and distributed some €240 to different neighbourhood children, whose parents reported the gifts to the police.

The boy’s grandmother accompanied him to the police station where he apologized, officials said. He also tapped into his piggy bank to pay her back, using money she had given him the previous week for good marks in school.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS