Danka is dead

Dumped in landfill: search for body underway

Danka's body is being searched for at a landfill site.(Bild: AFP/www.interpol.int)

The whole of Europe searched for little Danka from Serbia - and hoped for a happy ending. This hope was buried on Thursday. The girl is dead. The body is said to have been dumped in a landfill by two men after the child was allegedly run over.

Was it a knee-jerk reaction or an ice-cold plan to save their own heads? The more details that emerge about the death of little Danka - who would have been two years old on May 6 - the more tragic the case becomes and the more it moves the whole of Europe.

On March 26, the girl disappeared from her parents' garden in a village near the town of Bor in a brief, unobserved moment. A short time later, the child was probably already dead. What exactly happened has not yet been fully clarified and the investigation is in full swing.

Men confessed
On Thursday, two men confessed to killing the girl. According to Serbian media reports, the suspects are two 50-year-old workers from a public water company. On the day of the disappearance, they were driving a company vehicle - said to be a Fiat Panda - on Radomir Putinka Street.

(Bild: AFP/www.interpol.int)

According to reports, the driver was driving far too fast for the road conditions. The girl was hit by the car. What happened next is almost unbelievable. According to their own statements, the two men loaded the girl's body - it is still unclear whether Danka was already dead at this point - into the trunk of the car and drove to a nearby landfill site. There they threw the child into a ditch.

False trail led to Vienna
In the meantime, a Europe-wide search operation was launched for the missing girl. For a short time, a lead even led to Vienna. A video emerged in which two women and the supposedly missing child could be seen. However, it turned out that it was not Danka.

The bombshell came on Thursday: Serbia's President Alexander Vučić announced that the two men had been arrested. DNA traces from Danka, which were recovered from the blood-smeared car, led to the suspicion of the two workers.

Four excavators deployed in the search
Whether their version that they killed the child in an accident is true is the subject of the current investigation. According to Serbian media reports, the workers also claimed to have been drunk at the time of the incident. The statements would not match exactly. What is a fact, however, is that Danka's body has not yet been found. Four excavators are currently working at the landfill site. 

Police Minister Bratislav Gašić is due to address the public and media at 3 pm.