North Rhine-Westphalia: SEK arrests wanted 34-year-olds: accomplices in sight

Kreuztal/Hamm (dpa/lnw) - Special police units caught a 34-year-old in Kreuztal near Siegen who had been wanted for many months and who was accused of aggravated robbery.

North Rhine-Westphalia: SEK arrests wanted 34-year-olds: accomplices in sight

Kreuztal/Hamm (dpa/lnw) - Special police units caught a 34-year-old in Kreuztal near Siegen who had been wanted for many months and who was accused of aggravated robbery. The man was under the influence of drugs when he was arrested and was injured by his "massive resistance", the police in Hamm reported on Tuesday. A banned and loaded Soviet submachine gun and other pistols were "at hand" in his partner's apartment, where the man was arrested on June 2. Pre-trial detention was ordered.

The 34-year-old is now in a prison after treatment in a prison hospital. Investigators had been publicly looking for the man since the end of September 2021. He is said to have committed a brutal robbery on a couple in their home in Hamm last August. At that time, masked perpetrators pried open the terrace door of the house, threatened the couple with a gun and stole jewelry and cash. The perpetrators fled in the victims' car, which they had left handcuffed. The loot was worth six figures.

A DNA trace and intensive investigative work in cooperation with several authorities brought the detectives to the track of the 34-year-old. According to the police, the man appeared for property and violent crimes, among other things, and has already served a prison sentence of several years. After his arrest, searches of apartments in Kreuztal, in Cologne and in the Reichshof in Oberberg brought incriminating evidence to light.

Work is now being done to identify the other accomplices in the robbery and to obtain an arrest warrant against them. Whether other criminal offenses can be attributed to the 34-year-old is also the subject of the ongoing investigation.