Six adults argued with a young woman in the Berlin suburb of Prenzlauer Berg because she apparently did not want to wear mouth and nose protection on the tram. The group then racially insulted the 17-year-old and hit her so badly that she had to go to the hospital.
In the dispute over a missing mask, a 17-year-old teenager in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg was beaten and hospitalized on Saturday evening. According to her, the argument escalated with a total of six adults on a tram. The men and women informed the girl about the mask requirement, the police said on Sunday.
After an initially verbal argument, the young woman was racially insulted by the group. When everyone involved left the train, the dispute is said to have escalated further. The young woman was surrounded and repeatedly punched and kicked. In addition, one of the women involved is said to have pulled out her hair, the police reported. The 17-year-old finally had to be admitted to the hospital, according to German newspaper Die Welt.
The responding police officers recognized from previous encounters one of the attackers from a video shot by the victim. He and two other suspects, aged between 42 and 51, were arrested at a nearby pub but denied the allegations. Some of the men were drunk, and the police also found narcotics on one of them. An investigation remains ongoing.
The mask obligation seen across the world in response to the Covid-19 crisis has provoked extreme reactions and raised social tensions. Last month, there was widespread outrage in Austria when a child was forced to take his test outside in freezing weather because he had no mask, despite having a medical exemption to the obligation to wear one.
