Photo: Paul Gillingwater
No jail time for asylum seeker who dumped baby in road
Published: 19 Oct 2016 15:58 GMT+02:00
- Almost 8,000 refugees left Austria in 2016 (13 Oct 16)
- Chancellor: 'Austria is not a racist country' (10 Oct 16)
- Vienna's benefits system acts as a 'magnet for refugees' (07 Oct 16)
The 27-year-old had been living in an asylum centre in Vienna's Floridsdorf district and had already been given several warnings for being drunk and violent.
So when he turned up again intoxicated with a beer in his hand and was told to leave, he flew into a furious rage.
Spotting his baby daughter in a pram nearby, he grabbed her and ran into the busy road, and put her in the middle of a traffic lane.
The man's lawyer denied however that he wanted to cause the child any harm, saying he wanted to take a photograph of her to indicate that they had been thrown out onto the street.
The child was saved when police officers arrived a short while later.
The court heard that the police officer who rescued the child said she was "on the road for a few seconds", and that approaching cars all managed to brake in time.
The father, who stood a few feet away and shouted incomprehensible words, tried to interfere with the rescue operation and push the police officer away, according to local media.
The 27-year-old, who denied he put his daughter's life in danger, was finally sentenced to nine months' conditional imprisonment for endangering his daughter and attempted resistance to police officers. The accused accepted the sentence after consultation with his lawyer.
