Considered a suspect

After fire in Vienna: mother under investigation

The Vienna public prosecutor's office

(Bild: justiz.gv.at)

After an apartment fire in Vienna at the end of February, the father initially disappeared with his children (3, 5) and was found shortly afterwards. Investigations by the public prosecutor's office have now revealed that the children's mother is a suspect.

On a Monday afternoon in February, a 34-year-old woman was informed that neither her husband was at work nor their two children at nursery school. The woman drove to the apartment in Vienna-Floridsdorf and alerted the fire department as it was already on fire.

The fire department extinguished the fire after one and a half hours, but discovered no one in the apartment. The police then launched a manhunt for the father and the two children. Two days later, the Austrian was located in Frankfurt, Germany, together with his two-year-old daughter and five-year-old son.

Employees of the municipal department responsible for child and youth welfare (MA 11) brought the siblings back to Austria a short time later. "They are doing well, the father is behaving very cooperatively," emphasized the MA 11 spokeswoman when asked at the time.

The public prosecutor's office confirmed on Monday that the woman was being investigated. However, a corresponding fire report is still pending, they said. 

Is at large at the moment
According to the public prosecutor's office, the mother accused of arson is currently at large. "There is no urgent suspicion and no grounds for arrest," said spokeswoman Nina Bussek. There are no indications of other suspects and the woman denies the allegations, Bussek said.

The family's situation has been known to MA 11 since October 2023 and is likely to have been a source of conflict for some time. At that time, the police had issued a no-entry order against the man, but this was no longer active at the time of the fire. The 33-year-old is said to have reported a threat to the child's welfare by the mother to the authorities. Divorce proceedings are also said to have been pending at times.