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Woman watches helplessly as old couple poison her puppy

A dog owner in western Germany could only look on in horror as an elderly couple poisoned her six-month-old puppy.

Published: 14 January 2016 13:17 CET

Woman watches helplessly as old couple poison her puppy

A beagle puppy. Photo: Wikipedia Commons

It is a crime that leaves one almost as flabbergasted as appalled.

A middle aged woman in the small town of Euskirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, was walking her beagle puppy in the local park when an old couple approached her.

The man, who looked to be in his seventies, grabbed her by the arm, while his wife threw meatballs for the infant canine to chew on.

When the dog owner finally freed herself the elderly pair made a getaway on a pair of green bikes.

But the damage had already been done. The meatballs were poisoned.

Although the dog-owner brought her puppy immediately to a vet it was not certain that it would survive.

Police describe the fugitive pair as follows: The man has silver glasses and his grey hair is combed backwards. He is around 186 cm tall and very thin.

The woman has silver hair which is cut short and was wearing green and beige chequered trousers.

People poisoning dogs seems to be a problem which is on the increase in Germany, with some people apparently upset about dog poo in public spaces taking drastic measures.

On Facebook dog owners have taken to creating maps showing where they have found booby-trapped treats, Tagesspiegel recently reported.

But people in one German town found a more novel and less violent way of raising awareness about dog waste in 2015, when they collected a huge sack of it and hung it round the neck of a famous local statue.

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Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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