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OFFBEAT

Husband clinging to wife’s car goes on wild ride after marital spat

Police in Darmstadt had to intervene on Tuesday morning after several people alerted them to a man screaming for help as he clung for dear life onto the hood of a moving car.

Published: 12 July 2017 15:57 CEST
Husband clinging to wife's car goes on wild ride after marital spat
Photo: DPA

The calls came in from shocked eyewitnesses on several streets, police report.

On Wilhelminenstrasse, Karlstrasse, in the Orangerie district and finally on Klappacher Strasse, people alerted police to the fact that a man was holding onto the bonnet of a moving car, calling for help.

Officers were able to intercept the car as it approached the police headquarters. And just as alarmed passersby had reported, a man was hanging onto the bonnet.

Further investigation revealed that the woman behind the wheel was the man's 61-year-old wife.

The couple explained that they had been embroiled in a domestic dispute when the wife decided she had had enough, and got in her vehicle to drive off.   

In an attempt to stop her, her 39-year-old husband climbed onto the bonnet. But that didn’t put his wife off. She just put her foot on the gas and sped off.

The woman told police that she had wanted to take her husband directly to the police, because he had been shouting so much.

During the course of questioning, police detected the smell of alcohol on the breath of both husband and wife.

A breathalyzer test confirmed that the couple had been drinking. Charges were then filed against the 61-year-old woman.

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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