Leo Stettin

Leo Stettin (b. 9 June 2011; d. 29 July 2019 in Frankfurt am Main) was an eight-year-old German schoolboy who was murdered by an illegal asylum seeker from Eritrea. Because, according to an expert at the trial, the murdering African Habte Araya (b. 1979) suffered from a disorder on the schizophrenic spectrum, he was not sentenced to life, but was committed to a mental institution for an indefinite period of time.

Life and death

Leo and his mother from Schloßborn, a part (Ortsteil) of Glashütten in Hesse, wanted to spend some time with family in München. They first traveled to Frankfurt am Main and were waiting for their ICE (high-speed train). It was summer, school was out, and father and sister stayed at home. Leo would have his mother all to himself for a few days. But things would turn out differently.

The analysis of the video recordings from the surveillance cameras in Frankfurt Central Station revealed that the later perpetrator was already in the station building early in the morning of 29 July 2019. For several hours he strolled back and forth between the north and south sides of the station hall with his hands in his trouser pockets, sometimes briefly leaving the main station. His black foreign face showed anger, raw aggression. Only shortly before the murder did he suddenly speed up and then abruptly turn to platform 7, where he was recorded for the last time by a camera nine minutes before the crime.

Shortly before 10 a.m., on platform 7, Habte Araya, who witnesses say was laughing, pushed a 40-year-old mother, who was standing on the platform, and her eight-year-old son Leo into the track bed in front of an arriving Intercity Express (ICE). Although the train entered the main station at the prescribed speed of 30 km/h and the locomotive driver immediately initiated emergency braking, there was no chance of stopping the train in time. The mother was able to escape to safety on a narrow footpath between the tracks. The boy was run over by the incoming train and died on the track bed.

Another woman, 78 years old, was also attacked by the attacker, but was able to defend herself, was injured in the shoulder and suffered shock. The blood perpetrator, Habte Araya, fled, but was chased down by passers-by and was arrested by the police. Witnesses stated, the mother screamed for minutes until she collapsed. The then Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer (CSU), announced on the same day that he would interrupt his vacation to hold talks with those responsible for the security authorities. Seehofer assured: “The perpetrator will be held responsible for the crime using all legal means.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not comment on the crime and traveled by helicopter on the same day for her summer vacation in South Tyrol.

After the insidious crime, a large number of people laid flowers, cuddly toys and other signs of sympathy at the head of platform 7 of the main train station. Even a week after the crime, the press described this temporary memorial as a sea of ​​flowers. Around a month after the crime, the memorial on track 7 was dismantled by Deutsche Bahn (DB). After the attack, a book of condolence was laid out in the “Room of Silence” of the station mission in which those interested could sign. A call for donations for the benefit of the bereaved raised over 100,000 euros in the first week. In the summer of 2021, at the request of the family and after coordination with Deutsche Bahn, a memorial pole with a plaque for Leo was installed directly at the crime scene.

Habte Araya (murderer)

In 2006, Araya initially came illegally to Italy via Libya on a fishing boat and then traveled on to Switzerland without permission. There he applied for asylum and claimed that he was being persecuted in his country. The fact is, he was wanted as a criminal. He worked for a while and was then unemployed. He is said to have regularly abused and terrorized his family.

On 25 July 2019, Araya first locked his wife and three children in their apartment. He then threatened his neighbor and wanted money. When she refused, he suddenly began choking her and threatening her with a knife in his hand that he would kill her. She was lucky, the husband was able to drive him away. The black African was now wanted nationally by the Zurich cantonal police, but he had already fled and crossed the German border illegally.

A few weeks before the trial began, the family spoke out and criticized the police's investigative work. On 28 August 2020, the Frankfurt State Court (Landesgericht) handed down the verdict. The crime was to be assessed as a murder of Leo and an attempted murder of his mother, but Araya was "incapable of guilt" (schuldunfähig) because he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The court classified the attack against the 78-year-old woman as mayhem. The court ordered Araya to be placed in a secured ward (geschlossene Abteilung) of a psychiatric clinic (in accordance with § 413 StPO).

The expert is said to have testified before that there is “a high probability” that the Eritrean will commit further crimes. At the trial, the lawyer for the father of the killed boy, who is acting as a co-plaintiff, rejected the accused's apology on behalf of his client. “My client will not accept this apology because there is no excuse for what was done,” lawyer Ulrich Warncke told reporters during a break in the trial.

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External links

• African Migrant Stars in ‘Diversity’ Campaign ― Now He’s Accused of Crushing 8-Year-Old Under a Train
• Leo wurde acht Jahre alt – Ein Eritreer stieß ihn vor einen Zug