Germany: 70-year-old babysitter guilty of killing boy

BERLIN – A court in Germany has found a 70-year-old babysitter guilty of manslaughter for the killing of a 7-year-old boy she was looking after.

Judges at the regional court in the southwestern city of Heilbronn sentenced the woman Monday to 10 years and six months in prison.

The trained nurse, who had been the boy’s babysitter for several years and who he called “Grandma Elisabeth,” had strangled the child while he was staying the night at her home.

Judges rejected the defence lawyer’s arguments that his client, whose full name wasn’t released because of German privacy rules, had killed the boy by accident, though they did take into consideration that she might have been suffering from depression and been overwhelmed by stress.