An 11-year-old boy is suspected of involvement in the death of a 10-year-old girl at a children’s care home in Germany, police have claimed.
The girl was found dead in her room at a child and youth welfare facility in Wunsiedel, in Germany’s Bavaria region, on Tuesday.
Evidence collected at the crime scene ‘indicates the involvement of an 11-year-old boy’ staying at the same facility, local police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.
‘Since the 11-year-old boy is below the age of criminal responsibility, he has been placed in a secure facility as a preventive measure.’
It is still unclear how the girl died, though a police spokesperson told German media she suffered a ‘violent’ death.
The case comes with Germany still reeling from the killing of 12-year-old Luise Frisch, who was found dead in the western town of Freudenberg last month after suffering multiple stab wounds.
Two schoolgirls, aged 12 and 13, have confessed to the murder.
Police and prosecutors declined to give further details on the Wunsiedel case but said the boy had not yet been questioned.
They added that they were coordinating closely with local youth authorities.
Bavaria’s regional interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, praised the investigators for identifying a suspect so quickly.
‘It is thanks to the meticulous and highly committed investigations that a person involved in the crime could be identified in a comparatively short time.
‘What’s important now is to clarify the exact circumstances of this tragedy,’ he said.
The child and youth welfare centre in the small town of Wunsiedel, home to around 90 children and teenagers, said it was ‘deeply shocked’ by the girl’s death.
‘Our thoughts and prayers are with the parents, the family, our children and our colleagues,’ it said in a statement.
On its website, the institute describes itself as supporting ‘young people and their families who need help with their upbringing’.
Investigations into the girl’s death will continue unhampered throughout Easter weekend, a police spokeswoman on Friday.
Less than a month ago, the town of Freudenberg, near Cologne, was rocked when Luise Frisch, 12, was found dead after vanishing following a play date.
Her killers, named as Luisa Halberstadt, 13, and Anna-Marie Hoffman, 12, stabbed their victim 32 times with a nail file before pushing her down a steep embankment in nearby woods.
The classmates also put a plastic bag over Luise’s head before one chillingly told the other to ‘hit her with a stone or she would be lying next to her’.
The pair confessed to the crime but will avoid punishment as they are too young to bear criminal responsibility in Germany.
Police fear Luise may have been alive before she was thrown down the embankment and died from her injuries and the sub zero conditions that hit the area in early March.
An investigating source told MailOnline: ‘The act itself was terrible. Experienced officers who have been involved in many homicide cases have been left shocked by the murder.
‘Not only by the age of the victim but also the age of the suspects – the murder weapon has yet to be found and although initially we thought it may be a knife we now suspect it may be a nail file.’
Officers urged people not to share the identities of the suspects on social media in the wake of the attacks, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
Pictures of the girls with the word ‘killer’ were circulated on various sites as outrage grows over the fact both will escape justice because they are below the age of criminal responsibility in Germany, which is 14.
A petition demanding the law be changed gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures.
Death threats were also made online against the girls and they and their families have been moved from their homes in the sleepy village of Freudenberg.
Police were forced to station patrol cars outside the suspects’ homes to discourage enraged citizens from damaging the properties and it is unlikely that the families will ever be able to return.
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