A 13-year-old girl has allegedly stabbed and critically injured her 24-year-old caretaker in a psychiatric clinic in Paderborn in the German State of North Rhine Westphalia.
The victim was stabbed in the back with a bread knife on August 16 and had to undergo emergency surgery to save her life.
The police had warned the hospital administration just days before the attack that the youth was highly dangerous.
According to news agency dpa, police investigators had learned that the teenager was to be allowed into the hospital kitchen as part of her therapy. The police then warned the hospital that the kitchen knives could be a source of danger but the warnings were apparently not heeded.
According to magazine Spiegel, the 13-year-old had told acquaintances that she wanted to kill someone before her 14th birthday – that is, before she reached the age of criminal responsibility.
Her birthday is in autumn, so investigators were reportedly particularly alarmed when they heard about the girl’s access to the kitchen.
On the day of the alleged attack, the youth was due to prepare lunch together with two caretakers and a kitchen aid. A guard who had been tasked with surveying the teenager reportedly left the room for a couple of minutes – at which point the girl allegedly took the knife and stabbed the victim in the back.
At the time of writing there had not been any official comment from Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL), the communal agency that operates the Paderborn hospital.
The girl – whose name and ethnicity have not been published – has a history of alleged Islamist radicalisation. In June 2025, Paderborn police placed her under round-the-clock observation after receiving “concrete indications” that she was planning to harm or kill policemen.
As she is underage, she could not be arrested. According to tabloid Bild on August 17, the girl was radicalised online.
The teenager was at the time living in a shared social housing project with a dedicated caretaker. On June 23, she escaped from the house. When police found her, she allegedly tried to harm the officers and reportedly uttered “jihadist threats”. She was subsequently placed in the psychiatric ward where the August 16 attack took place.
As the Bielefeld police and the Paderborn public prosecutor’s office announced on August 17, the 13-year-old would now be placed in a closed psychiatric ward for the time being.
