A mother was run over and killed by her ten-year-old son after she allegedly allowed him to try and park their van, according to local media.
The boy lost control of the vehicle while attempting to move it on private land in southern Hesse, Germany, police said.
The van then crashed through a gate before colliding with a parked car. The child was unharmed.
Investigators believe the ten-year-old had been driving with his mother’s consent.
Police said the vehicle had been moved as gardening work was being carried out at the property.
The public prosecutor’s office has commissioned an accident reconstruction expert to establish the exact sequence of events and determine whether there were any technical defects with the van.
Police are continuing to investigate the death. Under German law, children under the age of 14 are not considered criminally responsible.
The accident happened on Tuesday at around 3.30pm on Wilhelm-Leuschner-Straße.
A mother was run over and killed by her ten-year-old son after she allegedly allowed him to try and park their van, according to local media (stock image of German police)
It comes after a young mother died on her 21st birthday after her neck became trapped in the closing window of her family’s BMW in 2019.
Yulia Sharko was trying to pull her two-year-old daughter from the vehicle through the half-open front seat window when the tragedy unfolded.
According to reports citing law enforcement, the child accidentally pressed the automatic window switch, causing it to close on her mother’s neck.
Her husband, Artur, later found the mother-of-two unconscious beside the vehicle. He smashed the jammed window to free her before pulling her ‘lifeless body’ from the car in the village of Staroe Selo.
The distraught husband called emergency services and Yulia was rushed to hospital. The 21-year-old, from Žabinka, died eight days later after suffering asphyxia which caused severe brain damage.
‘Her brain suffered irreversibly due to clamped arteries,’ a local report said.
She never regained consciousness following the incident, which happened as she celebrated her 21st birthday with friends.
