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CRIME

Robber beats retreat after children offer savings

An armed robber who held up a babysitter at gunpoint in Lower Saxony was shamed into leaving empty-handed by the two young children of the house who offered him their pocket money.

Published: 16 November 2011 16:30 CET
Robber beats retreat after children offer savings
Photo: DPA

The man had rung the doorbell of the house in the northern town of Schwanewede near Bremen on Monday evening, and forced his way in.

Wearing a balaclava and a long black coat, the man had the terrified babysitter at gunpoint when the children she was looking after, came downstairs.

When they offered him their savings, he was obviously overcome with shame and left the house without a word – or a cent.

“The children had heard what was going on from upstairs and came down with their money, all their savings,” a police spokesman told The Local on Wednesday.

He said he was not releasing the ages of the children in order to protect them from being identified, but that they were both younger than seven.

“The robber must have realised what he was doing was awful, and simply put his gun away and left,” said the spokesman.

The authorities are now looking for the would-be robber, described as in his early twenties, 185 centimetres tall and thin.

The Local/hc

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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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