2024 incident archive
13 documented cases.
- Attempted homicide in frankfurt, DE
· Convicted · 1 source
Three young men were convicted of attempted murder by the Frankfurt regional court on 24 September 2026 over an attack on a police car and the officers inside it on New Year's Eve 2024. That evening a group of ten to fifteen people was out in the Nordwestzentrum district of Frankfurt. The court found that their aim was to use the noise and activity of New Year's Eve as cover for attacking police officers. The group first gathered in a park, where they made Molotov cocktails and set off fireworks, then moved shortly after 23:00 to a square in the Nordwestzentrum. From a footbridge they threw fireworks and other incendiary devices at a passing police car. At 23:16 the group moved to a nearby pedestrian crossing, where an electric scooter 120cm long and weighing 29.25kg was standing. The court found that they agreed to drop it only once a car was close to the bridge, wanting to cause the greatest possible damage. When they heard sirens, a car carrying five officers approached at 85km/h. On a command two of the group threw bottles, and moments later a third threw the scooter. The scooter struck the car beside the interior mirror. The windscreen shattered but was held together by a safety film. The driver suffered a head injury and, despite poor visibility, managed to brake and bring the car to a stop at a bus stop. Two of the officers were injured. The judge called the outcome the best case that could have occurred, and said tests and calculations had shown the driver would have been killed had the scooter been released two milliseconds earlier. The court imposed seven years' imprisonment on the man who threw the scooter, six years on another defendant and four years and ten months on the one it found had coordinated the group at the scene. The sentences went beyond what the prosecution had sought. All three were sentenced under juvenile criminal law, having been 16, 17 and 19 at the time of the offence.
- Homicide in madrid, ES
· On trial · 3 sources
A 29-year-old woman was stabbed to death in the Usera district of Madrid in the early hours of Monday 30 December 2024. Officers called to a fourth-floor flat at about 02:00 found her with knife wounds to the neck and right armpit, and paramedics could only confirm her death at the scene. Her former partner, a 60-year-old man, had fled the flat and was arrested nearby a short time later. A restraining order protecting her from him was in force at the time, imposed after several complaints of abuse, and she had been placed at the highest police alert level after three such complaints. Neighbours said they had heard arguments between the couple. According to the first enquiries she had asked him to stop harassing and threatening her, and he had not accepted the end of the relationship. The government delegation against gender-based violence confirmed the killing as a case of gender-based violence; she was the 47th woman killed in Spain that year in such circumstances, and she left a young daughter. The trial opened at the Provincial Court of Madrid on 11 September 2026 with the selection of a jury and the parties' opening statements, the accused being due to give evidence the following Monday. It is the third trial he has faced in connection with the same woman, having already been convicted of threats and of assaults against her. Giving evidence on 14 September 2026, the accused admitted stabbing her during an argument after she had gone out for the night without him, and admitted breaching the restraining order imposed on 22 November 2024. The prosecution seeks 26 years' imprisonment for murder and breach of the order. Counsel for the family told the court they would seek compensation from the State for failing to monitor her protection correctly, addressing the claim to the Ministry of Justice and, where appropriate, the Ministry of the Interior, and bringing a civil action against the Government if the administrative claim went unanswered.
- Homicide in viseu, PT
· Convicted · 1 source
O crime ocorreu no centro comercial Palácio do Gelo em dezembro de 2024. O homem estava acusado de um crime de homicídio qualificado consumado e mais seis na forma tentada.
- Homicide in castignano, IT
· Convicted · 3 sources
The victim, a 45-year-old woman, was killed by her husband at their home in Castignano (Ascoli Piceno), in the hamlet of Ripaberarda, on 19 December 2024. A court found the killing was the intended outcome of over a year of mistreatment, torture, and injuries inflicted with pointed and bladed instruments. On 9 July 2026, the Corte d'Assise di Macerata convicted the husband and sentenced him to life imprisonment plus three months of daytime isolation.
- Homicide in ski, NO
· Acquitted · 4 sources
Two people were found killed at a house in Ski, in Akershus outside Oslo, on Saturday 14 December 2024: a woman in her seventies and her son, a man in his forties. A third member of the household, the woman's daughter and the man's sister, then in her forties, was arrested and charged with both killings. All three were registered at the same address. In the days after the killings her defence lawyer said she had given a detailed account, accepted criminal guilt as charged at that stage and wished to cooperate with the police, and that the police had requested a preliminary psychological assessment. Her trial ran for five days at Follo og Nordre Østfold district court. On Friday 21 August 2026 the state prosecutor asked for a sentence of 17 years' imprisonment, arguing that the killings were carried out in a particularly ruthless manner against two people who were in her care and who trusted her. Counsel for the victims' family sought damages, compensation and forfeiture of her inheritance rights. Her defence asked for acquittal. What happened was not disputed at trial. The accused admitted killing her mother and her brother but did not accept criminal guilt, and the question before the court was whether she was criminally sane at the time. A forensic psychiatric assessment was central to the case: court-appointed experts diagnosed severe depression with psychotic symptoms. The mother died of heavy pressure to the neck, according to the forensic pathologists. The brother was killed with a knife; the court heard that considerable force had been used and that one of the stab wounds had passed through a rib. Evidence at trial described a household in severe decay, and the woman had taken on an increasing and very extensive care burden at home from 2015 onwards. On 8 September 2026 the court acquitted her, finding that she lacked criminal responsibility at the time of the acts and that there was no basis for committal to compulsory mental health care. She was ordered to pay over 400,000 kroner in compensation to her surviving brother but did not lose her inheritance rights. The prosecutor said it would be for the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide whether to appeal.
- Homicide in fuengirola, ES
· Alleged · 1 source
A 25-year-old Dutch man was shot dead while working at a cannabis club in Fuengirola, on the Costa del Sol in the province of Málaga, on 7 December 2024. The attacker used a semi-automatic weapon. The suspect, a Belgian national who was 17 at the time, is alleged to have been recruited as a contract killer and to have been sent to kill someone other than the man he shot. He was first arrested in Ghent in June 2025 under a European arrest warrant and transferred to Spain two months later, where he was held in a juvenile detention centre. He was released in May 2026 after the nine-month legal maximum for pre-trial detention expired without a trial beginning or precautionary measures being sought, and then disappeared. In August 2026, now 19, he was arrested again in northern Belgium. The East Flanders prosecutor's office reported the arrest.
- Homicide in piacenza, IT
· Convicted · 2 sources
A 13-year-old girl died on 25 October 2024 in Piacenza after being pushed from a seventh-floor terrace of the building where she lived. Her boyfriend, then aged 15, was prosecuted for her murder. The juvenile court convicted him and sentenced him to 17 years. On 10 September 2026 the Court of Appeal in Bologna reduced the sentence to 15 years. It granted general mitigating circumstances at the request of the prosecutor general's office, after the young man, now 17, confessed to the killing at the first appeal hearing.
- Homicide in oslo, NO
· Charged · 1 source
A 30-year-old man disappeared in Oslo on 29 September 2024. In the night leading into 30 September he drove to the Torshov area of the city, and his mobile phone was in use until the following morning. There has been no sign of life from him since. Police initially treated the case as a disappearance, but from the spring of 2025 they investigated it as a killing. In February 2026 they released a photograph of the car he had used on the night he vanished. His body has not been found and no cause of death has been established. On 10 September 2026 a man in his 30s was arrested and charged with the killing. Oslo District Court ordered him held in custody for four weeks with a ban on letters and visits. He denies criminal guilt through his defence counsel. Police have said the two had some form of relationship but have not described it, and have not ruled out further arrests. The man was already in custody in connection with a separate case that is under appeal. Counsel for the bereaved family said they had been told of the arrest and hoped it would help bring an answer to what happened.
- Homicide in cutro, IT
· Charged · 2 sources
A 69-year-old man was killed at Cutro, in the province of Crotone, on 21 September 2024, according to the case brought against his wife and their son. His body has never been found; investigators believe it was thrown into the waters of the river Tacina, in the locality of Steccato di Cutro. On 28 September 2024 his wife went to the carabinieri station at Cutro to report him missing, saying he had disappeared a week earlier, on 21 September. From that point he appeared to have vanished. Carabinieri investigated for a full year, using telephone and environmental intercepts on several of the victim's relatives and interviewing many people, until evidence began to emerge that led them to believe his wife and their son were involved in his killing on that date. Both were entered on the register of suspects in December 2025. Carabinieri RIS officers and police divers from Messina carried out several searches to recover the body, which has not been located. Investigators documented what they describe as repeated attempts by the pair to divert the inquiry: reporting the disappearance a week after it was said to have happened, agreeing between themselves on the accounts they would give to investigators, buying several litres of bleach in order, according to the accusation, to clean the scene, and giving contradictory statements that were found on checking to be untrue. On 30 September 2026 carabinieri arrested the victim's wife, aged 60, and their son, aged 28, both from Cutro, executing an order of pre-trial detention in prison issued by the investigating judge of Crotone at the request of the local public prosecutor. Both are accused of homicide and of concealing a corpse, acting jointly.
- Homicide in amsterdam, NL
· On trial · 4 sources
A 37-year-old woman was seriously wounded in her home in the Chasséstraat in the De Baarsjes neighbourhood of Amsterdam-West on the evening of Friday 16 August 2024, and died of her injuries in hospital two days later, on Sunday 18 August. Police were called at about 8.50pm and found the wounded woman, her partner and her six-year-old daughter in the flat. The partner, then 27, was arrested at the scene and the child was placed with a relative. The woman had suffered a wound to her leg that severed an artery and caused heavy blood loss. Neighbours later said they had heard what sounded like an argument. The prosecution alleges that the accused inflicted the wound with a shard of glass during a row, and is trying him for manslaughter, with the alternative charge of grievous bodily harm resulting in death if that is not made out. It regards a fallen vase as an unlikely cause of an arterial wound to the upper leg, which it says must have been inflicted with considerable force, and it points to a documented pattern of difficulty controlling aggression on the part of the accused, who had previously undergone treatment for it. The accused denies responsibility. He maintains that he was asleep and that the victim injured herself on a vase that had fallen, and he denies that any argument took place. At a pro-forma hearing in November 2024 forensic examination had produced few clear indications either way, and what happened in the flat that evening remains disputed. On 27 August 2026 the prosecution demanded a sentence of eight years' imprisonment. The accused, by then 29, had been in custody for two years. Judgment was scheduled for 10 September 2026.
- Homicide in burgos, ES
· Convicted · 4 sources
A 32-year-old man from Valladolid died in the early hours of Saturday 24 February 2024 in Burgos, where he was attending a bachelor party. He was struck by a single, very hard punch that killed him almost instantly. Police at first found no sign of an assault, but forensic work and witness statements later established that he had been hit in an unexpected attack. A 23-year-old man from Burgos was arrested early the following day and remanded in custody without bail. Investigators had considered whether the victim was attacked because he was from Valladolid, but the jury at the trial did not find that motive proven. In February 2026 the Burgos provincial court convicted the attacker of reckless homicide (homicidio imprudente) rather than murder, and sentenced him to four years in prison and to pay 250,000 euros in compensation. The prosecution and the family appealed, seeking a retrial. In September 2026 the High Court of Justice of Castilla y León upheld the conviction and sentence, while criticising the trial judge's conduct of the proceedings. The family said it would not take the case to the Supreme Court.
- Attempted homicide in temse, BE
· Charged · 1 source
A young woman was attacked in Temse, East Flanders, on Friday 19 January 2024. According to the East Flanders public prosecutor's office she had set off on her scooter from Temse railway station when a man, also on a scooter, followed her and pushed her off it. He then punched her repeatedly in the face and seized her by the throat. She broke free, fled to a nearby house and the police were called. The attacker fled and was not traced at the time. An appeal for information produced 34 tips, and DNA traces recovered at the scene were examined. The resulting profile matched that of a man who had been identified in a separate investigation, and he was arrested on 22 December 2025 and brought before an investigating magistrate the following day. The prosecution treats the Temse attack as attempted manslaughter. The suspect, a 40-year-old man, is due to answer for it before the correctional court in Dendermonde on 1 September 2026, alongside a separate charge arising from the investigation in which he was first identified.
- Homicide in vicenza, IT
· On trial · 1 source
A 14-year-old boy from the province of Vicenza died in January 2024 of a femoral osteosarcoma that his parents had declined to have treated by conventional medicine. His illness began in December 2022 with sudden leg pain; a specialist examination at a Vicenza hospital produced the cancer diagnosis, and a second opinion at a Bologna institute confirmed a particularly aggressive tumour. His parents, followers of the so-called "Hamer method", refused radiotherapy and standard oncological treatment, signed him out of hospital, and also withheld medication prescribed by his paediatrician, using clay compresses and "natural" anti-inflammatories instead. His decline lasted roughly two years. Both parents are on trial before the Corte d'Assise in Vicenza, charged with intentional homicide with indirect intent. Court-appointed experts filed their report on 7 September 2026, concluding that the boy could have been saved had the standard chemotherapy and surgical protocols been followed, and rejecting the defence's argument that there was no causal link between the parents' decisions and their son's death. The report also raises the possibility that neurotoxic preparations were administered to him. The next hearing is set for 16 September 2026.