Mönchengladbach (dpa / lnw) - After the attack on a senior citizen in Mönchengladbach, a 35-year-old was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting a particularly serious robbery. "Again and again these attacks on old people. Such acts must be severely punished," said the presiding judge Hagen Diepholder on Tuesday. Unlike the prosecutor, who had applied for seven years in prison, the district court did not see the accused as the mastermind behind the robbery: "I think they took part and got carried away. But someone else planned the crime."
One of the robbers rang the doorbell of the 77-year-old in Mönchengladbach last October and pretended to be a parcel delivery man. After the old lady opened the front door, three men harassed her, threatened her with a knife and scissors, and robbed her.
The gangsters also asked her about the money from a house sale two weeks earlier. The elderly woman replied that it was in the bank and handed the robbers 600 euros in fear of death. They then searched her apartment and found wedding rings and gold coins worth 300 euros.
"I only got 50 euros from the loot," the accused, who had been convicted several times, claimed in the process. The perpetrators' knowledge of the sale of the house was fatal for the father of four: his partner had cleaned for the victim of the robbery and the girlfriend's mother was friends with the elderly woman.
He also spoke at length about the crime with a friend whose phone was monitored by the police in another investigation. During the trial, however, the accused insisted that he was not at the victim's home. He was only forced to drive the getaway car. The defense attorney announced that he would appeal the verdict.
