Verona Pooth wants tougher penalties for burglars

Verona Pooth and her family probably imagined Christmas to be different: Strangers broke into their villa in Meerbusch near Düsseldorf on Christmas Eve. They stole cash, bags and jewelry worth several hundred thousand euros, and even tore a firmly anchored safe out of the wall – and left a devastated house. Particularly sad: All of Pooth’s wedding jewelry was stolen.

Now the moderator has commented on the incident. The 53-year-old was still shocked at the intrusion of strangers into her privacy. She wanted the perpetrators to be caught, she told the TV broadcaster “Bild”. “If only to break this chain so that these perpetrators are absent from the organized gangs and other gang members get scared.”

As a deterrent, Pooth calls for much tougher penalties. “If five of them are caught and given a heavy sentence, the others may wonder whether it is worth going to jail for three to five years.”

Verona Pooth wants tougher penalties

Indeed, the law gives the courts a wide margin of discretion in relation to this offense. According to Section 244 of the Criminal Code, “whoever commits a theft in which he breaks into an apartment to carry out the act, gets into the apartment with a wrong key or other improperly intended tool or hides in the apartment” will be treated with a Penalty from six months to ten years. Recently the law was even tightened. Now it says: “If the burglary affects a permanently used private apartment, the penalty is imprisonment from one year to ten years.”

In the case of Verona Pooth, that would mean that nobody would get away with it for less than a year. But for that the police would have to get hold of the intruders first.

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