Sewing needles, nails, screws and other small metal objects hidden in sweets distributed to children on Halloween night. This is what several families in Germany discovered after the traditional house tour on October 31st, when the little ones go from door to door asking for “trick or treat”. The sharp objects had been inserted into chocolate bars, gummies and wafers, in some cases still wrapped in their individual packaging.
The reports, collected by the police over the weekend and reported by the German agency Dpaconcern numerous regions of the country. The police suspect that in several cases the sweets were intentionally tampered with and have opened investigations for attempted dangerous bodily harm. Similar incidents were also reported in Austria. So far, no children have been injured.
Needles in chocolate bars: cases discovered in Germany
One of the incidents occurred in Hanover, Lower Saxony, where a nine-year-old girl found three sewing needles, one in each of three sweets collected during Halloween: a chocolate bar and two chewable sweets. The little girl had not consumed the products and remained unharmed.
In Filderstadt, near Stuttgart, two families discovered several needles hidden in two milk and hazelnut snacks. According to police, the metal objects were not visible from the outside. On Monday 2 November a further complaint arrived: a mother found a needle inside a packaged sweet collected by her daughter.
In Bavaria, in Landshut, screws were found in sweets and chocolate bars. In Nuremberg a child even bit a needle while eating chocolate, but fortunately he did not suffer any injuries.
Other reports came from Thuringia, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, North Rhine-Westphalia and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
In Essen, in particular, two families reported the presence of needles in bars and packages of gummy sweets. The father of a 13-year-old boy noticed some small holes in the wrapper of a snack, only to discover a metal tip stuck sideways into the chocolate.
The police: “Sweets intentionally tampered with”
Investigators are trying to identify those responsible and reconstruct the origin of the products. In Thuringia, the police explained that the evidence collected suggests that the objects were inserted into the sweets deliberately, with the intention of causing injuries.
The main difficulty is tracing the homes in which the children received the individual packages, often collected along routes that include numerous streets and dozens of houses.
No connection has been established between the episodes that occurred in the different German regions, nor have common perpetrators been identified. Furthermore, there is no evidence of tampering during the industrial production of the sweets.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, meanwhile, a case initially considered suspicious has been clarified: two small magnets found in a sweet in Appenheim had ended up in the product accidentally. The police have ruled out tampering by a third party.
The discovery of a father in Austria
The alarm also reached Austria. In Linz, a 28-year-old father discovered several nails about a centimeter long in chocolate bars and sweets collected by his children in the Oed neighborhood.
The objects, according to the Austrian police, had been inserted so deeply that in some cases they were invisible from the outside. No injuries were reported in this episode either. Authorities are trying to establish where the sweets were distributed.
The police warning to parents
After the findings, German law enforcement agencies invited families to carefully check all the sweets collected during Halloween before letting their children eat them.
Attention should especially focus on small holes in packages, damaged packaging, unusual deformations or unusual odors. An apparently intact casing, however, does not exclude the presence of hidden objects.
In the event of a suspicious find, the recommendation is not to consume the product, keep it together with the packaging and contact the police immediately. Metallic objects must not be removed, if possible, to avoid compromising any traces useful for the investigations.
The authorities urge caution, without fueling panic. It still remains to be clarified who hid the objects in the sweets and whether the concentration of reports during Halloween itself has a common explanation.