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CRIME

Woman flees with a stranger’s baby 250 km away to Hanover

A woman has been arrested after snatching a baby from her mother in Potsdam and fleeing to Lower Saxony.

Published: 11 August 2017 11:35 CEST
Woman flees with a stranger's baby 250 km away to Hanover
File photo: DPA.

The 19-year-old woman had approached the baby’s 35-year-old mother while she was grocery shopping with her three children on Thursday afternoon, police report.

The younger woman offered to take care of the mother’s four-month-old baby girl, who was in a carriage, while the mother brought her groceries into her flat.

When the mother returned, her baby and the woman had disappeared. The mother then called the police, who launched an extensive search with dogs, helicopters and emergency officers.

Police eventually found that the 19-year-old had fled to Lower Saxony with the baby – around 250 kilometres away from Potsdam.

Several hours later at around 8pm on Thursday, the woman was arrested in Hanover, police reported. The baby was found unharmed.

Due to organizational complications, however, the mother could not be reunited with her baby until Friday morning, a police spokesman said.

Police also reported that the 19-year-old had acted alone and did not make any demands.

Investigators so far do not believe that the woman and mother knew each other previously, and the motive behind the crime thus far remains unclear.

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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