Central Saxony
“It breaks your heart”: Döbeln mourns murdered girl Valeriia
Döbeln in Central Saxony. Here Valeriia and her mother sought protection from the war in Ukraine. Then the terrible thing happened.
© Robert Michael / DPA
Disbelief spread, even among experienced investigators. Nine-year-old Valeriia from Döbeln is dead, murdered by an unknown assailant. The violent death of the girl has hit the district town to the core.
The body of the nine-year-old girl was found deep in the undergrowth in an impassable forest near Döbeln on Tuesday at around 2:30 p.m. After the autopsy, investigators assume that a crime has been committed and are investigating manslaughter and murder. The search for the perpetrator is currently focusing on the child’s social environment, explained senior public prosecutor Ingrid Burghart on Wednesday.
Valeriia was missing for more than a week
On Monday of last week, Valeriia set off for school in the morning. But she did not show up for class. Because the school neglected to call her mother, her disappearance was not noticed until the afternoon when she did not come home. Then an intensive search was carried out for days: by drone and helicopter, with special dogs and divers; hundreds of police officers combed the city, images and videos from cameras were analyzed by so-called super-recognizers. Known sex offenders in the region were checked and television programs were searched for clues about the girl. The police also contacted colleagues abroad – the girl and her mother fled the war in Ukraine in 2022, her father was fighting on the front lines there. For a long time, no hot leads were found, and an accident was also considered possible.
The police used this photo to appeal to the public in their search for nine-year-old Valeriia from Döbeln (pixelated later)
© Police Saxony
But since Wednesday there has been a sad certainty. And it is something that even the hardened police officers are feeling. “For nine days, we all had one and only goal: to bring the search for Valeriia to a good end,” said Police Chief Carsten Kaempf. The deep shock and dismay, even in the ranks of the police, cannot be expressed in words. “The loss of a child breaks your heart.” Everything is being done to make this possible. Solving crimes and finding the perpetrator, he assured. “That is our absolute focus.”
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the location where the body was found is also the crime scene. According to the information, it is a forest between Hermsdorf and Mahlitzsch – about four kilometers on foot from where the girl lives. There are no signs of sexual abuse of the child, they said. No information was given on the exact cause of death because of the ongoing investigation.
Read the live blog from the police press conference here
According to the police, a witness had reported hearing cries for help on the outskirts of the city early on. However, this could not be narrowed down at first, explained the head of the criminal investigation department, Mandy Kürschner. There was a distance of around two kilometres between where the witness heard the cry and where the child’s body was found. The search initially concentrated on the immediate vicinity of the apartment, the school route and the school. Just this Tuesday, more than 400 police officers combed through fields and forests in the southern part of the city and found the body there.
“Döbeln is shocked”
“We are all very saddened and shocked by the death of little Valeriia,” said Mayor Sven Liebhauser (CDU). “Döbeln is shaken.” Many citizens are not in the mood to celebrate now. The town in the district of Central Saxony, which has around 24,000 inhabitants, has therefore decided to cancel its town festival planned for the weekend. Instead, Liebhauser called on people to come together on Friday evening to remember the girl with candles in their hands on the Obermarkt. There will also be a memorial service on Sunday. A donation account has also been set up to support the family.
At Valeriia’s school, teachers and students are also grappling with the news that a child from their ranks was violently taken from her life. Several school psychologists have been on site since Wednesday for a crisis response, said Clemens Arndt, spokesman for the State Office for Schools and Education. The authority is also investigating misconduct at the school because the girl’s absence from class was not reported to her mother.