Search for children

Siblings in hiding: Boy (11) was with his father

(Bild: KRONEN ZEITUNG)

A search has been underway for a week for three siblings aged four, eleven and 13, who had fled in the course of a police operation on suspicion of child abduction. One of the children, the eleven-year-old boy, has now reappeared. He was traveling with his father. The children's mother is now in custody.

Late on Wednesday evening, the officers were called out to an official duty in the Ottakring district that had nothing to do with the case of the three children. They came across a man with a boy. Because the two were behaving unusually - the father wanted to run away from the police officers with the child - they were stopped and checked.

It turned out that it was the father of the three children, who had been wanted since their disappearance because the police "wanted to question him in the course of the surrounding investigation".

"The eleven-year-old was handed over to the guardians", says Gass, i.e. the city's child and youth welfare department (MA 11). "The father was questioned. He was unable to provide any information about the whereabouts of the other children and stated that he had nothing to do with the child abduction." The public prosecutor's office ordered no further action to be taken against the man.

Mother lost custody seven months ago
The reason for the operation that led to the disappearance of the children was that the mother had probably had the children in her care for seven months despite having been temporarily deprived of custody. Due to the mother's excessive demands, the children had no structured daily routine and no adequate home suitable for children, and they had only attended school irregularly, said MA-11 spokeswoman Ingrid Pöschmann.

There had been several reports of endangerment and the 38-year-old herself had also contacted the authorities for help. In June 2023, the children were taken to a crisis center. Later, the woman is said to have "gone into hiding" with her youngest daughter. The two older ones ran away from a shared flat, presumably also to their mother.

During the police operation last Thursday - we reported - the authorities only found the two older children. It is suspected that the four-year-old girl may have been "roped down" by the woman from a window on the second floor using sheets shortly beforehand. The two siblings also fled on the way to the crisis center.

Mother (38) in custody
The mother was taken into custody last Saturday due to the risk of absconding, blacking out and committing a crime. According to the police, she refused to make any statement.