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CRIME

Creepy ‘plait thief’ strikes again in Styria

Police are appealing for witnesses after a strange man cut off a seven-year-old’s long plaited hair as she was on her way to school in eastern Styria last week.

Published: 12 January 2015 11:51 CET
Creepy 'plait thief' strikes again in Styria
File photo: Shutterstock

Police fear that a man known locally as the “Zopfabschneider” (plait cutter) is back after going quiet for a few years. In April 2011 there were several reported incidents of a man aged between 40 and 50, who spoke the local dialect, approaching young girls and snipping off their plaits.

He was described as balding, with short grey hair and stubble. He was dressed in a black jacket with a neon green lining and blue jeans. He also wore a black woolen hat edged with blue, and brown shoes.

In the latest incident a seven-year-old girl and her nine-year-old brother were on their way to school in Bad Gleichenberg at 7.15am on Thursday when a man aged between 40 and 50 approached them, spoke to them, and walked down the road with them.

As they passed the tourism school he took a pair of silver scissors out of his jacket and cut off the little girl’s plait. He then ran away, and the children ran to school and reported what had happened.

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TERRORISM

Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter’s home

Investigators seized electronic devices at the home of a young Austrian who fired shots near Israel's Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Islamic State group propaganda material, authorities said Friday.

Published: 7 September 2024 09:02 CEST
Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter's home

German police shot dead the 18-year-old man on Thursday when he fired a vintage rifle at them near the diplomatic building.

They said they were treating it as a “terrorist attack”, apparently timed to coincide with the anniversary of the killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Authorities raided the gunman’s home in the Salzburg region, seizing electronic data carriers, Austria’s top security chief Franz Ruf told a press conference in Vienna on Friday.

READ ALSO: Munich Israeli consulate gunman was ‘Austrian national known to authorities’

During the raid, “no weapons or IS propaganda” material were found, Ruf added.

Despite being subject to a ban on owning and carrying weapons, the man managed to purchase a vintage carbine rifle fitted with a bayonet with around “fifty rounds of ammunition” for 400 euros ($445) the day before the attack, Ruf said.

He opened fire at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) near the Israeli consulate, sparking a mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich.

At a separate press conference in Munich, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said investigators were combing through the gunman’s electronic data but had yet to find conclusive evidence of his motive.

But the “working hypothesis” was that “the perpetrator acted out of Islamist or anti-Semitic motivation”, she told reporters.

Austrian police said on Thursday that the gunman, who had Bosnian roots, had previously been investigated on suspicion of links to terrorism.

Investigators last year found three videos he had recorded in 2021, showing scenes from a computer game “with Islamist content”, prosecutors said in a statement.

In one of them the suspect had used an avatar with a flag of the “al-Nusra Front”, a jihadist group active in Syria, said Ruf.

But the investigation was dropped in 2023 as there were no indications that he was active in “radical” circles, prosecutors said.

“The mere playing of a computer game or the re-enactment of violent Islamist scenes was not sufficient to prove intent to commit the offence,” they added.

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