Dhe light from a meter-high spotlight illuminates the site on the hill, the trees shine eerily in the otherwise dark Berlin park. On Tuesday evening, several police officers were standing at the tapes that cordoned off the place where passers-by found an injured child shortly before. It is the five-year-old girl from Berlin who has been missing since the afternoon. The police searched for the child with a helicopter and a large contingent. Now it has been found – and yet any help comes too late.
The girl was discovered in the evening with injuries by passers-by in the Pankow Citizens’ Park, says a police spokesman. Paramedics tried to revive the child. However, it died in the hospital. Police initially gave the child’s age as four years old and corrected the information later in the evening.
Police believe the girl was the victim of a crime. “It had injuries where you have to assume that it was a homicide,” said the police spokesman. “In this context, a suspect has already been arrested.” It was a German-Turkish 19-year-old.
Suspect has connection to victim
According to the police spokesman, the young man has a connection to the girl – but what exactly the connection looks like is initially not known. The five-year-old had German-Polish-Turkish nationality, the spokesman reported when asked.
According to the police, the girl was said to have been seen in Paule Park behind the Rathaus-Center before she disappeared. From there it is only a few hundred meters to the later site. However, what exactly happened remains unclear at first. The investigations by the homicide commission were ongoing, said the police spokesman.
“In the afternoon, a police officer was in the store and asked if we had seen a man with a little girl,” said an employee of a restaurant on the corner of the park. Then word got around quickly about what had happened. “They closed everything here. A helicopter also flew here for a long time.” As the RBB reported, the police were looking for the girl with almost 100 emergency services and a helicopter at times.
While the restaurant employee was smoking and watching what was happening from the window, police officers were securing tracks in the Bürgerpark until late in the evening. “I thought we were in sleepy Pankow,” says a cyclist who passes by, shaking his head. Meanwhile, people come and bring the first candles, a yellow flower and a small stuffed animal to the tape on the street.
Editor’s note: The original version referred to a four-year-old girl. The police changed the information about the girl’s age in the evening.