A local politician from the German conservative CDU party was reported to have been stabbed to death allegedly by a migrant from Guinea.
The remains of Christoph Rosenschon, a 26-year-old man from Beelitz-Heilstätten, a small town 20km outside Berlin, were found on January 14 after a fire erupted in an apartment block in which he lived.
Reportedly, he had not died in the blaze but of stab wounds to the throat and larynx according to media. Rosenschon had lived at the address together with his mother. The fire was set at two different locations in the apartment, according to reports.
Investigators were quick to dismiss suicide or a politically motivated murder as the source of death but could not identify the perpetrator.
On January 26, police arrested a suspect named as “Mahmadou-Alpha B”, a 24-year-old migrant from the Western African country of Guinea as the prime suspect. That was after he allegedly attacked a woman with a knife in the same building where Rosenschon died. “B” reportedly lived in another apartment in the same building.
According to the German press, the female victim was a 54-year-old Ukrainian named as “Vita S”.
She alleged to police she had been receiving a massage from “B” when he suddenly started strangling her and cutting the side of her throat.
After she tried to fight back, B let go of her and jumped out of a first-floor window. The woman reportedly received a 5cm cut to her throat which was deemed grave but not life-threatening. B was subsequently arrested in his apartment.
The apartment block was once a men’s sanatorium dating back to 1898. After lying derelict for decades, it was recently renovated and converted into a block of flats.
Brussels Signal research has indicated that the suspect had been living in the German town since 2017 and started training as a nursing assistant in a nearby clinic in August 2024.
When he moved into the newly renovated sanatorium, he reportedly told a local newspaper that he could still feel “the energy of the people from the past”.
Neighbours have described Rosenschon as a friendly and quiet individual.
