Cash Register Stolen

Thief Stole Children’s Proceeds from Fruit Stand

The cable tie has been cut, and the cash register is gone.(Bild: zVg)

Twins were selling homegrown fruit in Feldkirchen an der Donau, Upper Austria, and were happy to receive small donations. A brazen thief left the apples behind but made off with the cash box instead. “We were actually in the garden—we didn’t notice a thing,” says their mother, Karin M., annoyed by the thief’s audacity.

“The cash box is gone!”—Eleven-year-old Lukas could hardly believe it when he checked the “sales stand” next to the house in Feldkirchen/D. The cable tie had been cut and the cash box stolen—in broad daylight. Just moments earlier, the boy had been at the homemade stand. 

A Stand Set Up With Lots of Love
“The children set up the stand with a lot of love,” says the mother, adding that Lukas and his twin sister had even offered the fruits and vegetables they’d grown and harvested for free in the village of Landshaag along the Danube Bike Path.

“They put out whatever extra harvest they had. We then told them they could feel free to write that they’d appreciate a small donation,” says the woman from the Mühlviertel region.

Man behaved “strangely”
At the time, there were apples in the stand, and someone had seen a woman take some fruit and put money in the box. Shortly afterward, Lukas saw a man who was “acting strangely,” but the student didn’t think anything of it—it wasn’t until he noticed the cash box had been stolen that he “put two and two together.”

“The haul isn’t much more than a few euros, and the biggest loss is that the padlock is gone. But it’s not about the money,” says the mother, who is frustrated along with her children. The apples, by the way, were left behind.

There have been other thefts in the area
The family has since launched an appeal on social media. The reactions are clear: disgust for the perpetrator and sympathy for the children. 

Near this crime scene, night fishermen had recently been robbed, and burglars had struck at the beach kiosk on the Danube in Landshaag. There, however, they found no money; they only took the cash register’s USB drive.