Brutal authoraub in Gmunden: Maturant victims of unscrupulous perpetrators!

Brutal authoraub in Gmunden: Maturant victims of unscrupulous perpetrators!

In the night of Friday, several graduates were victims of a brutal attack in Gmunden in the parking lot of the Realgymnasium in Gmunden. As [Kosmo] reports, four masked people appeared after they had previously blown up an ATM in the nearby SEP shopping center. In order to secure their escape, the perpetrators needed a replacement vehicle.

The masked attackers discovered three sleeping students in a car. They forced the girls to leave the vehicle. Before they could flee, however, the vehicle owner hid the car keys. Unimpressed by this turn of events, the perpetrators threatened two male Maturants with a knife a short time later and used pepper spray to achieve the keys for a VW Tiguan.

stolen VW Tiguan in flames

After the perpetrators had robbed the SUV, they set fire to the vehicle. The stolen VW Tiguan was found on the same day around 10:15 p.m. in Aichkirchen in the Wels-Land district, about 27 kilometers from the original crime scene. The police confirmed that it was the stolen car and are now initiating investigations.

According to the State Criminal Police Office in Upper Austria, this incident may be part of a worrying development. Until now, 20 Average tomatoes in Upper Austria have already been recorded in 2025. The investigators therefore check a possible connection to a group of perpetrators that operate across Europe, which often operates with Dutch license plates. This group was also active in Bavaria and Slovenia and uses foreign license plates to cover their escape routes.

crime development in Austria

The incident in Gmunden is part of a worrying tendency that is documented in the police crime statistics (PKS). The PKS captures the development of criminal events in Austria and supports preventive and repressive fight against crime. As [Federal Criminal Police Office] explains, all of the cases displayed have been electronically registered since 2001, which enables strategic planning of the criminal police measures.

The PKS is also an advertisement statistics that only takes into account those crimes that were displayed by the police and sent to the court. Factors such as the display behavior of the population and the police control intensity influence the number of crime. The PKS period of view extends over ten years and it is continuously adapted to changes in criminal legislation and social phenomena.

Current developments in crime, especially in the case of ATM explosions, give rise to concern. The police will continue to work intensively on clarifying the attack in Gmunden.