Berlin: Woman pushes child off bike, steals it
June 10, 2019
A woman in Berlin pushed a 6-year-old child off his bike and then stole it over the weekend, police have said.
The boy was riding through Tiergarten, a large and popular park near the city center, when he was allegedly attacked.
The incident happened at about 7 p.m. The injured child ran home to his parents, who searched the surrounding area and found his bike and the alleged offender.
Police then arrested the 39-year-old suspect. They are investigating further.
Crime down in Germany
Despite the theft, German government statistics show crime dropped in the country last year to the lowest level in decades.
The theft rate in Berlin decreased somewhat in 2018, official statistics showed. Property offenses still represent the greatest proportion of reported crimes in the German capital, but they have been steadily decreasing over the past five years.
Read more: Berlin cyclists take over streets, demand more space for bikes
Bike thefts represented about 14% of such crimes, with about 30,000 cases in 2018.
In 2017, the largest proportion of bike thefts occurred in the Mitte area of Berlin, followed by Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Pankow and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.
Tiergarten is one of the largest urban parks in Germany, covering 210 hectares (520 acres), surpassed only by Berlin's Tempelhofer Feld and Munich's Englischer Garten.
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