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CRIME

Danish police look for clues after latest motorway bridge attack

Funen Police have called for help from the public after a car was hit by an object thrown from a motorway bridge on Tuesday evening.

Published: 29 August 2018 18:58 CEST
Danish police look for clues after latest motorway bridge attack
File photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

In a press statement, police asked members of the public who were in the area near the Ravnebjerggyden road southwest of Odense, on the northern side of the E20 motorway, to call the 114 police contact telephone number.

The 38-year-old driver of the car that was hit by a rock thrown from the bridge reported the incident to police, duty officer Anders Furbo Therkelsen said.

“The report was very specific, and that enabled us to move out to the motorway in numbers. We are now trying to clarify what happened,” Therkelsen said.

Nobody was hurt during the incident, which is the latest of several similar instances of rocks being thrown from motorway bridges near Odense and elsewhere in Denmark.

In 2016, a German woman lost her life when a rock thrown from a different bridge near Odense hit a car in which she was travelling. The case, which is being treated as murder, is yet to be solved.

Police asked anyone who drove underneath the Ravnebjerggyden bridge between 8pm and 10pm on Tuesday to get in touch, including those who recall driving over an object in the vicinity.

The E20 motorway was closed temporarily following the incident, and police took the step of a second closure on Wednesday in order to continue investigations.

“It was dark yesterday, so we have chosen to look again (today). That is based on the assumption we have not found the object which hit the car,” Deputy Chief Superintendent Jørgen Andersen said.

The closure was scheduled to take place from 6:30pm between junctions 52 and 53 headed west, before a closure on the opposite side of the motorway to complete the search.

Police estimated the closures would take around an hour for each side of the motorway.  

READ ALSO: Police in Denmark hunt for 'serial criminal' behind rocks dropped on to motorway traffic

CRIME

Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

Denmark’s government wants authorities to be able to move children out of families in which parents are gang members and is likely to formalise the measure in parliament.

Published: 9 April 2024 13:38 CEST
Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

The justice spokesperson with senior coalition partner the Social Democrats, Bjørn Brandenborg, told regional media TV2 Fyn that he wants authorities to have the power to remove children from their families in certain circumstances where the parents are gang members.

Brandenborg’s comments came on Monday, after Odense Municipality said it had spent 226 million kroner since 2009 on social services for eight specific families with gang connections.

“There is simply a need for us to give the authorities full backing and power to forcibly remove children early so we break the food chain and the children don’t become part of gang circles,” he said.

The measure will be voted on in parliament “within a few weeks”, he said.

An earlier agreement on anti-gang crime measures, which was announced by the government last November, includes provisions for measures of this nature, Brandenborg later confirmed to newswire Ritzau.

“Information [confirming] that close family members of a child or young person have been convicted for gang crime must be included as a significant and element in the municipality’s assessment” of whether an intervention is justified, the agreement states according to Ritzau.

The relevant part of November’s political agreement is expected to be voted on in parliament this month.

READ ALSO: Denmark cracks down on gang crime with extensive new agreement

Last year, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told political media Altinget that family relations to a gang member could be a parameter used by authorities when assessing whether a child should be forcibly removed from parents.

In the May 2023 interview, Hummelgaard called the measure a “hard and far-reaching measure”.

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