Murder trial of 14-year-old girl opens at Vienna Regional Criminal Court
Murder proceedings have begun at Vienna's Regional Criminal Court against a 14-year-old girl accused of stabbing a 64-year-old woman at Baumgarten Cemetery.
Trial begins: 14-year-old charged with knife attack at Vienna cemetery
The murder trial of a 14-year-old girl has opened today at Vienna's Regional Criminal Court. She is accused of stabbing a 64-year-old woman at Baumgarten Cemetery. According to wien.orf.at, the victim died from her injuries at the scene.
The public prosecutor's office is treating the case as intentional homicide. An expert commissioned by the prosecution found that the teenager had an unstable personality disorder but deemed her criminally responsible, finding that she had an awareness of wrongdoing at the time of the act.
The defendant is currently held provisionally at the forensic-therapeutic centre of Asten Prison in Upper Austria. Since November 2025, she had previously lived in a socio-psychiatric facility.
Because the penalty for murder by those aged 14 to 16 years carries a maximum sentence of ten years' imprisonment, the case is being heard by a lay assessor court rather than a jury court. The public prosecutor's office additionally requested commitment to a forensic-therapeutic centre under Section 21 (2) of the Criminal Code. Defence lawyer Astrid Wagner objected to this, but her objection was rejected.
During the arrest, investigators from the regional crime office secured a pocket knife as the presumed murder weapon, bloodstained clothing, and the teenager's mobile telephone. According to available information, the device contains video footage of the act. During questioning, the 14-year-old confessed.
According to MA 11 – Vienna's Children's and Youth Services – the girl had previously not come to police attention for any criminal offences. The victim appears to have been selected at random. According to information from APA, the teenager is said to have taken ten tablets of a prescription benzodiazepine before the act.
Source: Google News AT — Crime (de)