EThese are relieved investigators who appear before the press in Neubrandenburg on Tuesday. The investigation was “successful” and that morning a 14-year-old was arrested as a strong suspect in the case of the six-year-old who was killed, says police chief Thomas Dabel. The judge issued an arrest warrant; The young person is in custody at the Neustrelitz correctional facility – an extraordinary measure given his age.
The teenager is strongly suspected of having inflicted the most serious injuries on a six-year-old boy near a football field in Pragsdorf on the evening of September 14th with great brutality – that is, “blunt and sharp force”. The boy had previously played with his two siblings and the suspect. After the boy did not return with his siblings, his parents reported him missing. Rescue workers looked for him, firefighters then found him seriously injured in a bush; he died in hospital.
The case shook up the region. There was great uncertainty in the village with only 580 inhabitants; Parents no longer let their children go out to play. According to Chief Detective Olaf Hildebrandt, chief investigator in the case, there were an “extraordinarily large number of rumors and speculations” about the boy’s death. It remains unclear whether the suspect was the focus.
“Affinity for aggressive behavior”
But even if the investigators presented the results on Tuesday as a major investigative success, the case raises questions regarding police work: the day after the murder, on September 15th, a knife was found in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. As it turned out, there were scraps of fabric from the clothes and blood of the killed boy as well as traces of the 14-year-old. The evaluation of traces at the State Criminal Police Office “took a little longer,” says Police Chief Dabel. In fact, it was eleven days. It was not explained why the process took so long.
In addition, the young person who was strongly suspected of the crime had already been the focus of the investigators, after all, he was the last person to see the six-year-old who was killed. According to police, he also made contradictory statements. Furthermore, according to Hildebrandt, the young person, who attended a special school, was known to have an “affinity for aggressive behavior”. However, no murder weapon was found during a search.
The police officers said they were concerned about the case on Tuesday. This “got close” to him, says chief investigator Hildebrandt; A case like this has never happened to him before, says Police Chief Dabel. The family of the boy who was killed was informed and they reacted “relieved, but still full of sadness,” says Hildebrandt. According to him, the families of the teenager and the killed boy know each other. The town is just a village, he says. But why this terrible act happened remains unclear on Tuesday.
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