The newly-elected mayor of a town in western Germany has been found with life-threatening stab wounds in what Chancellor Friedrich Merz has described as an “abhorrent act”.<\/p>\n
Iris Stalzer was elected as mayor of Herdecke on 28 September.<\/p>\n
She is a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, the junior party in Germany’s conservative-led national government.<\/p>\n
Ms Stalzer was found at her home with life-threatening wounds shortly before 1pm on Tuesday, police and prosecutors said in a statement.<\/p>\n
She was taken to a hospital by helicopter.<\/p>\n
Authorities did not comment on the nature of the wounds, however the leader of the Social Democrats\u2019 parliamentary group in Berlin, Matthias Miersch, told reporters that “we heard a few minutes ago that newly elected mayor Iris Stalzer was stabbed in Herdecke”.<\/p>\n
A later statement from police and prosecutors said that, as things stand, “there are no indications of a politically motivated act”, adding that a family connection was “presumed”.<\/p>\n
It did not elaborate but said that Ms Stalzer\u2019s children were still with police to clear up what happened.<\/p>\n
Mr Merz wrote on social media that “we fear for the life of mayor-elect Iris Stalzer and hope for her full recovery”.<\/p>\n
The statement from investigators said that they are “investigating in all directions” and that “a family background also cannot be ruled out at present”.<\/p>\n
Ms Stalzer, who beat a candidate from Mr Merz\u2019s centre-right Christian Democrats in a run-off vote to win election, is due to take office on 1 November.<\/p>\n
Herdecke is a town of about 23,000 people in western Germany\u2019s Ruhr region, between the cities of Hagen and Dortmund.<\/p>\n
Ms Stalzer\u2019s website says she is 57 and married with two teenage children.<\/p>\n
It says she has spent almost her whole life in Herdecke and has worked as a lawyer specialising in labour law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The newly-elected mayor of a town in western Germany has been found with life-threatening stab wounds in what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-66388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}