crime
Search for clues in the park: five-year-old girl dead in Berlin
Police officers illuminate a place in a park in Pankow in the dark. The missing four-year-old girl from Berlin is dead. A police spokesman said she was found injured by passers-by in the Pankow public park in the evening. photo
© Paul Zinken/dpa
On Tuesday, a feverish search is being carried out in Berlin for a little girl. The police are in action with a large contingent. In the evening, the five-year-old is found – and a young man is arrested.
The light from a meter-high spotlight illuminates the site on the hill, the trees shine eerily in the otherwise dark Berlin park. On Tuesday evening, several police officers are standing at the warning tapes that cordon off the place where passers-by found an injured child shortly before. It is the five-year-old girl from Berlin who has been missing since the afternoon. The police searched for the child with a helicopter and a large contingent. Now it has been found – and yet any help comes too late.
The girl was discovered in the evening with injuries by passers-by in the Pankow Citizens’ Park, says a police spokesman. Paramedics tried to revive the child. However, it died in the hospital. Police initially gave the child’s age as four years old and corrected the information later in the evening.
suspect arrested
Police believe the girl was the victim of a crime. “It had injuries where you have to assume that it was a homicide,” said the police spokesman. “A suspect has already been arrested in this connection.” It is a German-Turkish 19-year-old.
According to the police spokesman, the young man has a connection to the girl – but what exactly the connection looks like is initially not known. The five-year-old had German-Polish-Turkish nationality, the spokesman reported when asked.
According to the police, the girl was said to have been seen in Paule Park behind the Rathaus-Center before she disappeared. From there it is only a few hundred meters to the later site. However, what exactly happened remains unclear at first. The investigations by the homicide commission were ongoing, said the police spokesman.
Forensics until late in the evening
“In the afternoon a police officer was in the store and asked if we had seen a man with a little girl,” said an employee of a restaurant on the corner of the park. Then word got around quickly about what had happened. “They closed everything here. A helicopter also flew over here.” As the RBB reported, the police were looking for the girl at times with almost 100 emergency services and a helicopter.
While the restaurant employee was smoking and watching what was happening from the window, police officers secured tracks in the Bürgerpark until late in the evening. “I thought we were in sleepy Pankow,” says a cyclist who passes by shaking his head. Meanwhile, people come and bring the first candles, a yellow flower and a small stuffed animal to the tape on the street.