A young man from Afghanistan who’s charged with murdering the 17-year-old mother of their child in Grua earlier this week has been spotted riding on a train between Copenhagen and Hamburg, according to police. The little girl was still with him, after he took her along when he fled Norway.
Norwegian police were releasing new photographs of the man and the two-year-old child that were obtained from surveillance cameras. The photos are being shared with media in Norway and elsewhere in Europe, in the hopes of getting more tips from the public as an international manhunt for the suspect spreads.
A Danish witness told police that the suspect and the toddler were seen on a Hamburg-bound train on Thursday. The little girl was said to be restless and cranky, and passengers admonished the man to better supervise her after she’d moved dangerously close to the train’s doors. The witness also said the man was feeding the girl cake and soda and seemed unaccustomed to caring for a child.
He’s charged with murdering the little girl’s mother, who arrived in Norway with their daughter in March and sought asylum. She and the child were granted permission to stay in Norway on the grounds she was an underage single mother.
The man is not registered as having applied for asylum in Norway, and Norwegian authorities know little about him. Police believe the man and the murdered 17-year-old fled Afghanistan together with their child, but became separated in either Greece or Italy. Newspaper VG reported she fled to avoid her forced marriage to an older man.
She was found murdered on Wednesday in a house in Grua, Lunner township, where she’d been visiting relatives. Police have called the case “very complicated” and earlier said they had no information regarding any conflicts between the dead woman and the father of her child.
Police revealed on Friday, however, that she was stabbed to death and their child’s father is the prime suspect.
In addition to issuing international warrants for his arrest, authorities are highly concerned about the welfare of the child. Norwegian police continued to call for tips from the public on Friday as they also worked closely with police in Denmark and Germany.
Views and News from Norway/Nina Berglund
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