Police are looking for 12-year-old Antonio
Hanover. Fabio G. has been waiting for a sign of life from his son Antonio for a year. The boy from Hanover-Vahrenwald has been missing since September 2, 2021. Every day, the father is tormented by the uncertainty about the fate of the now twelve-year-old. Antonio has not returned from vacation with his mother, Franziska T. (35). Both are listed as missing.
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Fabio G. and Franziska T. have been separated since 2015, there was a custody dispute. He has filed a complaint for child abduction. The police assume that the boy is “a danger to life and limb”.
1294 people in Lower Saxony are considered missing
According to the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Lower Saxony, 205 children (up to the age of 13) are currently missing. There are 420 young people (up to the age of 17). A total of 1,294 people are listed as missing, 310 of them from this year.
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In the vast majority of cases, missing person cases are cleared up very quickly. According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 50 percent of cases are resolved within a week and 80 percent within a month. The clarification rate for children and young people (up to 13 years) is 97 percent. The number of missing persons is particularly high among young people. On average, there are 78,700 people between the ages of 14 and 17 nationwide every year.
Inform the police quickly and honestly
“In the area of children and young people, many come from problematic backgrounds who run away from residential groups,” says Fritz Raimund Schael, First Chief Inspector. According to the BKA, around 1,600 children have gone missing since 1957. More than half of them are counted among the unaccompanied refugees or permanent runaways.
In the case of adults, the police only intervene when they leave their usual area of life, their whereabouts are unknown, and there must be a danger to life and limb. If children and young people disappear, the security authorities intervene immediately.
“The first few days are the most important. What we then missed is difficult to catch up on,” says expert Schael. Missing persons often need medication urgently or are in another emergency situation. From experience, the chief police inspector can say: “We must be informed securely and honestly.” He knows of cases in which parents have remained silent about their upbringing problems – out of shame. But their children went into hiding because they wanted to live out their desire for freedom. Important information to determine the whereabouts of the missing.
Police locate missing person’s cell phone
Legal issues also sometimes make it difficult to find people. “In order to be able to view chat histories, we need a court order,” says Schael. He remembers the case of a 14-year-old. Police wanted to follow her posts on Facebook for clues as to her whereabouts. “For data protection reasons, we did not receive a court order,” says the investigator.
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In the past, the judicial reservation also applied to the cell phone location of missing persons. Since a change in the police law, this is no longer necessary. But depending on the size of the radio cell, this technical aid often only gives a very approximate location. “But it helps us when using search dogs,” says Schael.
But something irritates even the experienced investigator. According to the BKA, two-thirds of the missing are male. “I don’t have an answer to that. Maybe women and girls have better conflict resolution options,” the police officer suspects.
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People with dementia pose a particular problem. “They are difficult to find because they go to places in their imagination. And it happens that the relatives don’t know exactly what the state of health of the missing person is,” says Schael. He remembers a case a few years ago in Burgdorf. A man in his 80s had disappeared. Completely disoriented and confused, he was picked up by the police in Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein). He had no idea how he had traveled the more than 200 kilometers by car. According to the investigator, his relatives had no idea about his dementia.
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By Thomas Nagel and Manuel Behrens