An “exceptional” news, which worries Germany. This Tuesday, two young people aged 12 and 13 confessed to having stabbed to death a 12-year-old friend named Luise, who had been missing since Saturday in a small town on the other side of the Rhine.
The case revealed by the police and the prosecutor’s office during a press conference is unprecedented in the recent history of the country, and remains exceptional on a European scale.
many stab wounds
Luise était portée disparue depuis qu’elle avait quitté samedi en fin d’après-midi le domicile d’une amie à qui ella avait rendu visite, non loin de Freudenberg, dans l’ouest du pays, la ville de 17,000 habitants où résidait the victim.
About three hours after she went missing, her concerned parents alerted the police. The lifeless body of her daughter was found by police on Sunday in a forest a few kilometers from her home.
“He died after losing a lot of blood from numerous stab wounds,” Koblenz prosecutor Mario Mannweiler said. He said there was “no evidence of sexual assault.”
The two suspects “gave information about the case and eventually confessed to the facts,” Koblenz police chief Florian Locker said, adding that their statements were consistent with the facts. The murder weapon has not yet been found.
no criminal liability
The two defendants knew each other, specifies the prosecutor, who nevertheless refuses to give the slightest additional detail, in particular about whether they were in the same class or at the same school.
Nor has any element been leaked about the identity of the suspects and the alleged motive for their act.
“It is a complex issue and you have to analyze the reasons for your gesture based on your age. What would be a possible motivation for a child can seem completely incomprehensible for an adult”, specifies Mario Mannweiler.
The two suspected girls were not known to the police. Those under 14 years of age “are not criminally responsible.” They were handed over to social services and youth protection.
“Without voice”
During the press conference, the investigators were obviously in shock. “After 40 years of service in the police, there are still facts that leave us speechless,” said Koblenz Police Vice President Jürgen Süss.
“The act itself is very exceptional and we dislike it,” added the prosecutor.
The head of government of the regional state of North Rhine-Westphalia (west), Hendrick Wüst, did not hide his emotion either. “It is difficult to imagine and bear that children are capable of such acts,” he said during a news conference.
According to this conservative leader, “the number of crimes and violent acts by adolescents or children under 14 years of age has been increasing for several years.” Therefore, he called for more prevention work in this age group.
On Tuesday, a message of condolences appeared on the website of Luise’s school in Freudenberg, a city about 80 kilometers from Bonn and Cologne.
Rare fact in Europe
Few similar cases have so far occurred in Europe. Due to the age of the suspects, this drama is particularly reminiscent of Liverpool in 1993, when Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, then 10 years old, had kidnapped, tortured and murdered two-year-old James Bulger. The boy’s body was found two days later near a railway line.
Recently, in France, two teenagers, a 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, had been sentenced on appeal in October 2022 for the murder of Alisha, a 14-year-old schoolgirl beaten and then thrown into the Seine in Argenteuil, in the Paris region, in 2021. They were then fifteen years old.
Source: BFM TV
