Brandenburg police were called to an unoccupied single-family house in Altglietzen, a village of about 400 residents in the town of Bad Freienwalde, around noon on Sunday after a report that someone had broken in, police and prosecutors said in a joint statement, Daily Mirror reported. The owner had noticed the break-in and alerted police.
Inside, officers found the girl’s body and a seriously injured man. The statement said the man is believed to have inflicted his injuries himself and is suspected of being responsible for Lisa’s death. He used a firearm, according to information obtained by the German Press Agency (dpa).
The man was in a life-threatening condition in hospital under police guard on the evening of Sunday, and his identity was still unknown, said Michael Petzold, spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office.
“It is currently unclear whether he will survive his injuries,” Petzold said. He gave no details of the man’s injuries or of how the girl died, adding that an autopsy was planned.
Homicide units from Berlin’s State Criminal Police Office and the Berlin prosecutor’s office secured evidence at the scene with Brandenburg police that evening. Investigators were set to return to the house and grounds on Monday to secure further evidence. Lisa is believed to have been dead for some time.
A resident said that on the day Lisa disappeared, a car with Berlin license plates stood outside the house for hours with its hazard lights flashing. Other neighbors said they had heard cries for help in recent days, but no one called the police.
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Lisa Ta in a photo released by Berlin police. Photo courtesy of Berlin Police |
Lisa left her family’s home on Golliner Strasse in Berlin’s Marzahn neighborhood on the morning of Nov. 3 to catch a bus from Barnimplatz at around 7:30 a.m. to her school on Sella-Hasse-Strasse, police said. She never arrived.
Authorities said they had found no indication that Lisa wanted to leave her family, and a homicide unit took over the case on suspicion of a serious crime. Police went door to door, handed out witness appeals and searched with sniffer dogs and a helicopter. More than 100 officers were deployed on Sunday alone.
Until the body was found, there had been no leads suggesting the girl might be 50 km from Berlin, close to the Polish border, Petzold said. The search had focused on Berlin’s Marzahn-Hellersdorf borough and the adjacent parts of Brandenburg.
Key questions remain open, including how and when Lisa died, who the suspect is and what his motive was. Many of them could go unanswered if he does not survive, since an investigation is closed when the accused dies, according to dpa.