Judgments Against Youths After Robberies and Burglaries at the Vienna Regional Court

The regional court agreed to the detention requests due to the risk of committing further offenses. One of the accused, a 16-year-old with a prior conviction for robbery, has been of legal age for eleven days. The four teenagers have been in the Josefstadt prison since the end of May. They committed the crimes partly with a 13-year-old who is too young to be prosecuted and other youths who are being investigated separately. The crimes took place in Vienna, Linz, and Neusiedl am See.

Break-ins "out of boredom"

On April 23, 2025, the recently turned 16-year-old went to Burgenland with two other defendants and the 13-year-old, who is too young to be prosecuted. He wanted to visit his girlfriend. However, she had school until 3:00 PM, so the group loitered in front of the school building and was allegedly insulted by peers from Burgenland. "My friends didn't like what they said," the 16-year-old told a jury. Therefore, a 14-year-old pulled a knife and took a boy's valuables with the words "Should I stab you?"

On March 28, the 16-year-old was present when the youth group smashed the side windows of several cars with emergency hammers in the Millennium City area. "We damaged six cars," confessed the previously convicted: "They wanted to do something like that because they were bored." He wasn't interested in stealing anything from the cars. Instead, he smashed the windows "out of anger" because "they told me I had no guts."

On April 21, a 14-year-old was robbed by four defendants in a Vienna S-Bahn train. When he denied having a euro at around 11:30 AM, he was punched in the face and a knife was held to his throat. Since he had no money with him, he had to hand over his ATM card and reveal the code. The group later withdrew 100 euros from an ATM.

14-year-old: "I was immature back then"

One of the 14-year-olds was solely responsible for crimes in Linz. On March 12, he took a boy's basketball and, under the threat of throwing it into the Danube, forced him to hand over ten euros. When asked why, the 14-year-old replied: "I don't know, I was immature back then." Together with another, still underage boy, the 14-year-old smashed the display screens of ticket machines in numerous cases from early January 2025 to March. "For fun," as he stated when asked about the motive. According to the indictment, the damage amounted to 34,800 euros.

(APA/Red)

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