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CRIME

Thief caught selling phone back to victim

A pickpocket was left feeling stupid at the weekend after he tried to sell a mobile phone back to the woman he had stolen it from - and was promptly arrested.

Published: 24 March 2014 14:59 CET
Thief caught selling phone back to victim
Photo: DPA

The 24-year-old pickpocket stole a €700 iPhone out of a woman's handbag at the main train station in Düsseldorf on Saturday night – but immediately forgot what she looked like.

The victim, 22, rang the police to report the incident, giving officers a detailed description of the thief, wrote the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on Monday.

But just an hour later, she encountered her assailant again on a nearby street trying to make some quick cash. Not recognizing the woman, he tried to sell her phone back to her for just €60.

Together with her boyfriend, the woman seized the phone back from the pickpocket and took it straight to police in the train station.

There she gave officers another description of the thief and officers were able to apprehend him not long after, wandering around the station.

When police tried to arrest the man he grew aggressive and ended up spending the night in a police cell.

Police have charged the man with theft and handling stolen goods. 

SEE ALSO: Germany nabs Vatican-bound cocaine condoms

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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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