A 19-year-old Syrian registered refugee has admitted to the murder of a 16-year-old Austrian girl whose body was found over the weekend by her own mother after she had gone missing.
The body of 16-year-old Manuela K. was found by her mother on Sunday morning in the Anton Wodicka Park in the city of Wiener Neustadt underneath a pile of leaves, with investigators believing the teen to have been a victim of murder. Police later arrested 19-year-old Afghan migrant Yazan A. who then admitted to the murder, Kronen Zeitung reports.
The Syrian had been the former boyfriend of the teen and had come to Austria in 2014 via chain migration at the age of 15, joining his father who was already living in the country as part of the country’s family reunification programme.
Police said that during the interrogation of the 19-year-old he not only admitted to the murder but showed no signs of remorse for it, not giving investigators any clear idea to the motivation for the killing.
Following the discovery of Manuela’s body, her friends informed police that she had been visiting several restaurants that night and had been in the company of a Syrian friend, which led police to arrest Yazan A.
The case bears similarity to several other cases involving young teen girls murdered by asylum seekers within the last several years, including another case in Austria in which a 17-year-old Afghan migrant was arrested following the murder of a teen girl in the city of Steyr in Upper Austria in December.
There have also been several high-profile cases in neighbouring Germany, including the rape and murder of Maria Ladenburger in Freiburg, Mia in Kandel, and the death of Jewish teen Susanna Feldmann whose killer, Iraqi asylum seeker Ali Bashar, had fled the country following the murder and was later captured in his native Iraq.
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