Austrian police are searching for a suspect who is accused of raping an 85-year-old woman who was walking home from Vienna’s main train station, with authorities releasing a photo of the suspect to aid in their search.
The assault occurred around 1:30 to 1:35 a.m. Tuesday on Arsenalstrasse in Vienna’s Favoriten district, police said. The elderly woman was on her way home from Vienna Central Station when an unknown man pulled her into the courtyard of a residential building and raped her, according to the Vienna State Criminal Police Office.
Passersby heard her cries for help and saw a man flee on foot, a Vienna police spokesperson told t-online.
“Passersby were able to hear the victim’s cries for help and observed a male person fleeing the scene on foot,” the spokesperson said.
The injured woman was taken to a hospital by Vienna emergency services. Investigators secured evidence at the scene. An immediate police search did not locate the suspect.
Police published a photo of the man hours after the attack on the order of the Vienna public prosecutor’s office. A police spokesperson told t-online that the early release followed consultation between the state criminal office and prosecutors “in order to achieve the arrest of the fugitive suspect as quickly as possible as an additional investigative measure.”
By Wednesday morning, “several quite concrete tips” had already reached investigators, police spokesman Philipp Haßlinger told Die Presse and ORF. “The investigations are fully underway,” he said. The tips are being handled by the Vienna State Criminal Police Office’s southern branch.
Police continue to seek witnesses. No name, age or other identifying details of the suspect have been released.
There have been a number of horrifying rapes of elderly women by foreigners in recent years, including a case from last year where an 82-year-old Viennese woman was allegedly raped by her own care nurse, an Afghan national. She has since lost her will to live after the traumatizing experience, according to a lawyer representing the woman in court. The son in the case had to endure watching his mother being raped in realtime on his cellphone after he placed cameras in her apartment.
