Police Warn Parents: Needles in Halloween Sweets in 6 States
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Police in at least six German states are warning parents to check Halloween sweets carefully after children found needles, nails and screws hidden in chocolate bars and chewy sweets they collected on the evening of Saturday 31 October.
Cases were reported on Sunday 1 November in Thuringia, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia. In Wintzingerode in the Eichsfeld district, children found metal needles while unwrapping their sweets. In Filderstadt near Stuttgart, two families found several needles inside wafer bars that looked undamaged from the outside. Further cases were reported in Landshut, Nuremberg, Neuburg an der Donau, Hannover, Salzgitter, Bremen and two districts of Essen. Nobody has been injured so far. In Nuremberg one child bit on a needle but was not hurt.
Police believe the sweets were prepared on purpose and are investigating attempted dangerous bodily harm. Because the children rang at many doors, it is not yet clear where the sweets were handed out. A case in Appenheim in Rhineland-Palatinate, where a boy found two tiny magnets in a sweet, turned out to be an accident.
What this means for you: if your children went trick or treating, check every sweet before they eat it, including wrapped ones. Look for small holes, torn or resealed wrappers and hard objects inside. Police in Essen asked parents to look closely for puncture marks on the packaging.
If you find something suspicious, do not remove the object yourself. Keep the sweet together with its wrapper, note the streets your children visited, and report it to your local police station. Police are also asking anyone who noticed something unusual on Halloween evening to come forward.
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