What horrible news! A girl (aged 5) who has been missing since Tuesday afternoon is dead.
A passer-by discovered the little girl in a thicket in Pankow’s citizen’s park at around 5.40 p.m. on Tuesday evening – close to a goat enclosure where children can pet and feed the animals.
The girl was seriously injured and died a short time later.
Earlier, alarmed rescue workers had resuscitated the girl in the park. The five-year-old was taken to hospital by helicopter, where she died of her injuries a short time later.
According to information from the newspaper BILD, the girl was killed by several knife wounds.
A police spokesperson told BILD: “We assume that it was a homicide. A suspected 19-year-old has already been arrested in connection with the case.”
The 19-year-old was caught on Tuesday “at the edge of the park” where the girl was also found, a police spokeswoman said on Wednesday morning. “If the suspicion of the crime is substantiated, he will be brought before a magistrate today,” the spokeswoman continued.
The five-year-old was last seen in “Paule Park” at around 2.45 pm – then she suddenly disappeared.
The Fourth Berlin Homicide Squad is investigating. It is still completely unclear how the girl got from “Paule Park” to Bürgerpark, several hundred metres away, and what role the suspect plays in this. The police are investigating whether the child ran away or was even kidnapped.
A police spokesperson told BILD: “The suspected perpetrator is of German-Turkish origin. The victim has German-Polish-Turkish roots.” The 19-year-old has a connection to the girl. According to BILD information, however, the two are not related, but ” known to each other”.
How they knew each other and whether the man had lured the girl away from the playground and she went along unsuspectingly is the subject of the investigation.