The dismay in Berlin is great. A five-year-old girl was stabbed to death in a park in Pankow. A 19-year-old is quickly suspected of a crime. Now it turns out that he was the babysitter of the child who was killed.
In the case of the five-year-old who was killed in Berlin, the child’s 19-year-old babysitter is a suspect. The man took care of the family’s four children on Tuesday afternoon in a playground in the northern district of Pankow, said a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office. He then left when he was five. As a reason, he said the child had to go to the toilet. He asked other people to take care of the other three children. The German-Turk then came back without the girl and said he had lost her.
The alarmed police then started a large search operation with more than 100 officers and a helicopter. After a few hours, the lifeless girl was found by a passer-by several hundred meters away in the Bürgerpark. It had at least one stab wound. A resuscitation was unsuccessful. The child was flown by helicopter to a hospital, where he died.
Shortly thereafter, the police arrested the 19-year-old babysitter. The mother of the killed girl and the mother of the babysitter are friends, the spokeswoman said. A homicide squad has taken over the investigation.
Police officers had secured tracks in the Pankow Citizens Park until late Tuesday evening. Now possible witnesses are to be questioned. It is not yet clear when the autopsy of the girl’s body will take place. After the five-year-old died, people put up candles near where she was found, and a yellow flower and a small cuddly toy were discarded.
During the night, Berlin’s governing mayor Franziska Giffey expressed her condolences to the relatives. “I’m shocked,” wrote the SPD politician on Twitter. Her thoughts are with the little girl’s parents and her loved ones. “It breaks my heart and I am deeply saddened.” The district mayor of Pankow, Sören Benn, tweeted: “It’s so horrible
