D.the doctor had said: run, run. So Gisela H. goes on foot, whether it hurts or not. In 2019 she got the new hip. Her husband died in 2020. 2021: surgery on the eyes and new teeth. Now calm could return, she thinks, finally an end to the bad things. Gisela H. is attacked on September 5, 2021. She is 81 years old.
As always, she carries her handbag diagonally over her shoulder, for fear of forgetting it somewhere else. She took the white model, her summer handbag that goes so well with light clothing. In it, usually: matches and a lighter for the candle in the cemetery, and nail scissors if the flowers don’t fit in the vase. In addition, a folded bag: “I am an Eastern woman. We always have a bag with us in case there is anything on the way. ”Like every Sunday, she visits her husband’s grave. She usually goes out for a coffee afterwards, “you have to do something nice for yourself”, and when the weather is nice, she orders iced coffee. But Sunday is cloudy, no iced coffee weather. You also have trouble walking. The way back to her apartment in southeast Berlin takes half an hour.
The perpetrator first pushed her to the ground
Gisela H. is actually good on her feet, but she needs a break on September 5th. Presumably she took over the day before. Her world has become small in the seven years in which she cared for her husband, who was suffering from cancer. Almost 59 years of marriage, in the end he could just eat himself, nothing else. When Gisela H. talks about these last difficult years, her voice breaks. She often looks mischievous and likes to laugh. Or she shows photos of the great-grandchildren. The day before the attack, she was at Alexanderplatz for the first time in years. Had an appointment with a friend who she still knew from her training as a physiotherapist, and pocketed two extra fifty-euro bills. In the event that you still want to go to the department store. Sometimes she’s so happy to buy a new blouse.
On the afternoon of September 5th, Gisela H. rests for a moment in front of the brick building where her children went to school in the bus shelter at the bus stop. What happens next, she told on Monday in front of the Berlin regional court: A young, slim, dark-haired man approaches from the left, who initially seems to be waiting for the bus. As she walks on, she hears his footsteps. “What is he doing so slowly as an old woman?”, She thinks, and because she “is not really comfortable with it”, she stops. Pretends to study the election posters on the lamppost, lets the man overtake. When he then stops at the next bus stop, she walks past unconcerned.
Then, suddenly, she is grabbed by the arms from behind and her upper body is pushed forward. She sees a knife blade, a hand’s breadth from her stomach. Someone is pulling at her bag. Then a cut, the man cuts the shoulder strap and runs away with the bag. Before that, however, he pushes Gisela H. to the ground.
The father admonished him before his time in Germany
Almost three months later she looks the young, dark-haired man in the face for the first time and asks: “Would you do the same with your grandmother?”
Offenders who steal handbags from older women are typically young men, often just or not yet of adulthood. Most of the time they tear the strap off the women’s shoulders as they drive by or pass by, which is what you protect yourself against by carrying the bag diagonally like Gisela H. -Year-old, but also attacked an 86-year-old woman on crutches in her own hallway less than an hour earlier, is a strange case. One of the policemen who was involved in his arrest shortly after the second crime said in court: “He was not the classic robber.”
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#Handbag #theft #ugly #crime