To calm his mentally handicapped son, a father in St. Johann in Tirol goes for a walk late at night. He is attacked and knocked unconscious. The boy probably gets out of the stroller and drowns in the nearby river. The perpetrator escapes.
A mentally disabled six-year-old has been found dead in a river in Austria after his father was beaten unconscious and robbed by an unknown man. According to the police, the father, who comes from Germany, was out and about in St. Johann in Tirol with his son, who was sitting in the stroller, when someone apparently hit him on the head from behind with a bottle.
The father, lying unconscious on the ground, was found by a passer-by about an hour later. His cell phone and wallet were missing, and there was no trace of the child either. After an hour-long search by the fire brigade and police, the six-year-old was finally rescued from the Kitzbüheler Ache about 600 meters downstream.
According to the police, the boy probably got out of his buggy and fell into the river. The father was injured in a hospital and received psychological care. An autopsy on the boy was ordered by the public prosecutor's office for Monday. There is currently no indication that the unknown perpetrator used violence on him, emphasized LKA director Katja Tersch.
At around 4 a.m., the attacker had hit the boy's father in the back of the head with a targeted and powerful blow with a bottle. The 37-year-old fell to the ground and remained unconscious. As a result, the alleged perpetrator is said to have taken the man's wallet and mobile phone. He fled in an unknown direction. The cell phone and wallet were eventually found in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. There is no trace of the perpetrator.
As LKA director Tersch informed the "Mittelbayerische Zeitung" when asked, the German had been living in Tyrol for many years. The investigator could not say where exactly he came from in Germany. The fact that he was out with his son early in the morning was "completely normal behavior". Due to the boy's health problems, the family often went outside with the six-year-old in the middle of the night "to calm him down," according to the head of the LKA.
