The incident had caused outrage nationwide. But the cowardly perpetrator probably gets away with it – he benefits from a mix-up.
On January 18, 2023, a woman (26) was travelling on tram line 5 in the direction of “Südblick” in the Rostock district of Evershagen. At around 7.25 p.m. the unthinkable happened: a man sitting behind her held a lighter to her hair!
“After the young saleswoman noticed a small cloud of smoke and the smell of burning on her head, she jumped up and left the train at the Ehm-Welk-Straße stop,” police said at the time. Her hair had been singed by the deliberate ignition. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if the woman had used hairspray or something similar. Something like that could have acted like an accelerant.
The police immediately launched a manhunt for the unknown man. According to the victim, he was an African man, 25 to 40 years old and 1.70 to 1.80 metres tall. The dark-haired man with a three-day beard had been wearing loose dark trousers and a yellow-orange hooded sweatshirt at the time of the crime.
Whether he can ever be caught is now more than questionable. The police had secured the wrong video recordings! “There was a mix-up of the trams,” says police spokesman Martin Ahrens. The victim had unfortunately made a mistake during the first interrogation.
By the time the correct tram in which the hair attack had been committed was finally identified, it was already too late. The video recordings of the trains are deleted after 24 hours.
Police spokesperson Ahrens: “The police investigation measures have been exhausted. We have now given the case to the public prosecutor’s office for further decision.”
Presumably the case will be closed in the near future.