Last Updated on December 6, 2022
An Eritrean asylum seeker has been arrested and accused of stabbing two young teenage girls who were walking to school in the German town of Illerkirchberg. One of the victims was killed in the attack.
The attack reportedly took place at 7 am on Monday morning in the town of just 4,700 people, Breitbart News reported. The two girls, aged 13 and 14, were walking past an asylum home on their way to a bus stop when a man reportedly ran at them with a knife and stabbed them.
A 27-year-old asylum seeker from the Northeast African nation of Eritrea is the main suspect in the crime. He is accused of stabbing 14-year-old Ece S. in the stomach and injuring 13-year-old Nerea M. after stabbing her in the chest. The victims were later taken to a local hospital where the older teen died of her injuries, the German newspaper Bild reported.
Police soon arrested the suspect after he was seen running back into the home, which houses asylum seekers. Investigators recovered a knife inside the building that is believed to be the murder weapon.
“There the girl was bleeding on the ground with a huge stab wound in her stomach. A second had injuries below the chest, a stab wound,” a witness to the attack told a local media outlet.
The District Administrator of local region Alb-Donau-Kreis, Heiner Scheffold, released a statement on Tuesday in which he worried that public sentiment towards migrants would sour as a result of the unprovoked killing. “The shock runs deep… The fact that the perpetrator is a person who found refuge in our district is unforgivable – especially at a time when more people than ever before are fleeing to other countries for protection,” he said, according to Radio 3 Donau.
“On social media, it can already be observed how this terrible act is no longer only related to the person who committed it, but how all refugees are blamed. It is very clear to me that the attack on the two schoolgirls severely affects citizen’s sense of security,” Scheffold continued.
The same asylum home where the accused killer was living was previously the site of a sexual assault on a minor. In 2019, four migrants from Iraq and Afghanistan took a 14-year-old German girl from the nearby city of Ulm to the home, drugged her, then proceeded to take turns raping her.
The perpetrators were ultimately sentenced to just a little more than two years each for the heinous crime, Breitbart News reported.