https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayer...he-hinweise-zu-kinderleiche-aus-donau,TWrHMt5
Child's body in the river Donau: tips from all over Germany
After three quarters of a year, the murder of a little boy remains unsolved. The body was discovered in the Donau River in the Ingolstadt area.
The child has not been reported missing anywhere. The police are looking for a needle in a haystack.
Nine months after the discovery of a child's body in the Donau, the Ingolstadt Criminal Investigation Department continues to process several tips from the public. Most recently, the investigators, together with the Federal Criminal Police Office, had published the reconstructed picture of the dead boy on information screens all over Germany and asked for tips.
There had also been quite a number of tips from all over Germany after the action, said police spokesman Andreas Aichele. "But there wasn't one that would have helped us in leaps and bounds right away." Instead, he said, there were small investigative leads that were being followed up. "We are currently working with many files and interrogations."
The body of the preschool-aged boy was found on 19 May 2022 by a canoeist at a barrage near Vohburg on the Donau (Pfaffenhofen district). The identity and the cause of death are still unclear - despite a large-scale search for clues.
It is suspected that the child was murdered, because the dead boy had been wrapped and dumped in the river with a stone. The body lay in the water for a long time.
In autumn, a specialised forensic pathologist had reconstructed the face of the unknown boy. The case was presented in detail in the ZDF programme "Aktenzeichen XY... unsolved". According to the investigation, the child was between three and seven years old, 110 centimetres tall, weighed about 15 kilos and had blue eyes and dark blond to brown hair.
The police spokesman stressed that the case is still being worked on intensively. "We are still digging up the haystack properly - looking for the pin."
So far, however, there are no indications that witnesses have directly recognised the boy. Rather, tips had been received about children who had not been seen for a long time.
The criminal investigation department assumes that the dead child comes from another area. "We are relatively sure that the child does not come directly from the region," said Aichele. In Bavaria, he said, early detection and school enrolment examinations are also compulsory, and the boy should have been at these. "The child would not fall through the cracks there."
Currently,
the Ingolstadt Criminal Investigation Department's investigation team is searching Europe-wide for the perpetrator. One theory is that the wrapped child's body could have been thrown into the river from a bridge on the busy A9 motorway. However, there are no concrete traces of this, for example injuries on the corpse. "We can't prove it," the police spokesperson says about the thesis.
BBM
Young children in Germany get two thorough examinations to monitor their mental and physical development and to establish if they are ready for school. The first one, called U-9, is done when a child is around 5 years of age, the second one, SchoolStart Examination (or S1 or SEU) takes place in the months before the child starts school for the first time in the autumn.
The examinations are compulsory in all the Länder of Germany.
Of course the system only works if the child is registered, and not living off the radar.
