Mother of six stabbed, suspect arrested
Berlin – Herbert won’t be able to sleep tonight. He says it very calmly, as if to himself. “Sometimes I can’t sleep after file number XY, but this…”. He stands in front of a hairdressing salon and looks at the intersection where the crime took place. “That in my neighborhood a woman is stabbed on the street…”. He shakes his head and his crumpled bucket hat bobs along. The area is otherwise rather quiet. Herbert is not his real name. “What if the perpetrator is after me?”
As of 12 noon on Friday, the man who killed the woman has not been arrested. The crime happened in Berlin-Pankow on Friday morning around 10 a.m. on Mühlenstraße, on the corner of Maximilianstraße, opposite an Italian restaurant. A man stabbed a woman with a knife, so a police spokesman. The victim was still alive shortly after the crime, but died at the scene of the crime.
The Italian restaurant is only open from midday, so the landlord and his only guest at the counter tend to ask journalists about news and not the other way around. “Terrible,” says the hairdresser from Maximilianstrasse. A customer walked in and told about all the blood she saw on the street. You don’t know anything, but suspect the victim and perpetrator were in a relationship.
The Berlin police arrested a 42-year-old man around 1 p.m. Witnesses had previously recognized the suspect. According to information from the Berliner Zeitung, the knife attack is said to have been a femicide. The 31-year-old victim is the former partner of the alleged perpetrator. According to the police, both had six children and lived in the accommodation for refugees on Mühlenstrasse.
Security at the shelter brought the man to the scene, says an 18-year-old witness. Other witnesses say that the alleged perpetrator showed up at the scene and witnesses pointed fingers at him. The police then overpowered the man. “It is not uncommon for perpetrators to return to the scene of the crime and be arrested there,” says a police spokesman.
Officials are on site, the homicide commission is investigating and is still interviewing witnesses at the moment. Police are still investigating whether the man was on drugs, had been drinking or had a mental illness. Surrounding streets were largely closed. At 1:50 p.m., the coroner arrived to remove the woman’s body.