Pins, a blade and magnets found in Halloween sweets in Poland and Germany

Poland: a pin, a blade and unconfirmed reports

On Saturday, 31 October, a woman in Bolewice in the Miedzichowo commune posted a photo of a chocolate sweet she said contained a pin to a local Facebook group. She wrote that anyone who did not want to take part in Halloween could simply keep their door closed, and asked what would happen if one of the children had eaten it. In Lower Silesia, the parents of a girl found a sharp metal object, most likely a blade from a pencil sharpener, inside a sweet collected while trick-or-treating in the Ząbkowice district. Police are establishing which children she went out with and which homes handed out sweets. Przemysław Ratajczyk, a commissioner at the Lower Silesian provincial police headquarters in Wrocław, told RMF FM that officers were working to identify the person responsible.

“We are now carrying out intensive activities to identify the person who behaved in such an extremely irresponsible and dangerous way.”

Finds had already been reported in Wielkopolska, including the Poznań county, by Sunday, 1 November. A reader from the Łazarz district of Poznań sent a photo of a wrapped sweet with what was probably a pin inside. Online posts about similar sweets in Kołobrzeg and Mysłowice have not been confirmed, because police in both towns said they had received no official notifications.

Germany: needles and magnets

Police in three German states reported comparable finds on the Halloween evening, Saturday, 31 October. In Leinefelde-Worbis in Thuringia, police assume the sweets were deliberately fitted with needles, but because children visited many houses in one district, the source has not been identified, and an investigation for attempted serious bodily harm has been opened. A needle was also found in a toffee-style sweet in Herbsleben, also in Thuringia. In Filderstadt in Baden-Württemberg, two families found several needles hidden in two milk-and-nut bars that were not visible from outside, and police assume an unknown person placed them there on purpose. Police in Konstanz reported that individually wrapped wafers in Rielasingen-Worblingen contained metal objects. In Appenheim near Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate police reported that a boy found two small magnets attached to a chewing candy, and that investigation is also open.

Penalties and police advice

Polish police stressed that deliberately placing dangerous objects in sweets is a crime rather than a joke. Article 160 of the Polish Penal Code provides for up to three years' imprisonment for exposing a person to direct danger of loss of life or serious harm to health. Police in Nowy Tomyśl put the warning this way:

“This is not a prank but a crime of exposing someone to direct danger of loss of life or serious harm to health, punishable by up to 3 years in…”

German police advise that anyone who finds a suspicious sweet should keep it together with its packaging and report it to a police station. They also ask parents not to remove the object themselves, since they could accidentally destroy evidence. Polish police urged parents to check every sweet carefully before children eat them.