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CRIME

Nine-year-old girl found seriously injured in gully

Police in the town of Velbert, North Rhine-Westphalia have found a critically injured nine-year-old girl in a gully after she was reported missing by her parents on Monday night.

Published: 15 September 2009 16:24 CEST
Nine-year-old girl found seriously injured in gully
Photo: DPA

Her parents contacted police when she failed to arrive home on time after a homework help session, despite having a journey home of only 100 metres.

Police then began a full search effort for the girl in the Neviges area of the town. The authorities said that helicopters with heat-sensitive cameras were deployed to survey the area between 11 pm and midnight. Finding nothing initially, the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) joined on the search, along with a team of sniffer dogs.

The ten dogs and trainers began looking for the girl around 1 am on Tuesday morning, tracing her journey home from the former elementary school to her parents’ flat in the town centre, before turning to the forest area nearby.

According to the police, search officials decided the area around the school should be searched more thoroughly, and at 1:19 am one of the sniffer dogs, named Christo, and his handler Birgit Oschmann went behind the sports hall. Here, the dog seemed particularly interested in a gully.

It was there that the young girl was found, seriously injured. She was immediately rushed to hospital.

“We thought we were working on a murder case. If we hadn’t found her, she should have been dead,” a spokesperson for the public prosecutors office told media.

Police have refrained from releasing several details of the crime due to the ongoing investigation. Police are currently appealing for any witnesses who were in the area on Monday evening.

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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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