Curious cases keep law enforcement officers on their toes throughout Switzerland in 2024
Published: Wednesday, Dec 25th 2024, 10:50
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A naked man in a stairwell, a burning sofa on the freeway or a 30-metre-high water fountain on the side of the road: law enforcement officers in Switzerland didn't have it easy at the end of the year. Numerous curious cases kept them on their toes in 2024.
There was a lot of commotion in a Zurich apartment building: a naked man was hanging around in the stairwell. An exhibitionist? The police arrived and were able to help: The tenant was having a washing day. Apparently he felt like throwing all the clothes he was wearing into the washing machine at the same time. However, his naked walk back into the apartment did not go unnoticed.
"If you think the night on patrol couldn't get any weirder," wrote the Schaffhausen police on Instagram in October. "Voilà, here comes the herd of goats." Four goats were apparently on their way home from going out early one Sunday morning and jumped onto a public bus. Because the grumbling passengers did not want to leave the bus voluntarily, the driver alerted the police. With the help of the fire department, the four goats were finally returned to their owner.
In Neuchâtel, a car that had left the road knocked over a fire hydrant. A 30-metre-high jet of water then shot steeply into the air from the same spot. The jet was so powerful that the water supplier Viteos had to partially shut down the water network to get the situation under control again.
Sofa fire on highway
According to the St. Gallen cantonal police, a cigarette butt thrown out of the driver's cab may have been responsible for a sofa on the loading area of a delivery van starting to burn during the journey. The driver stopped on the hard shoulder of the A1 near Henau and pushed the sofa off the loading bridge onto the grass verge next to the highway. The fire department finally extinguished the fire.
In Basel, a balloon bear triggered a major rescue operation on the Rhine. Shortly before 9 a.m., the rescue operations center reported that an unidentified object was floating in the Rhine. The professional fire department then set out with three boats and the cantonal police on their boat. The police and paramedics were also on land. Around twenty minutes after the alarm was raised, the professional fire department's boat patrol gave the all-clear after recovering the supposed victim from the water: a bear-shaped balloon.
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