Abduction of Hendrik Snoek in 1976
On November 3, 1976, show jumper Hendrik Snoek was kidnapped by two men from his apartment in Münster and then hid in a 52 m high cavity in a pillar of the Ambachtal Bridge near Herborn. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of 5,000,000 DM (approx. 2,500,000 euros) from Snoek's parents for his release, which Snoek's best friend should give to Breido Graf zu Rantzau near Frankfurt am Main. On November 5th, an employee of the city of Herborn accidentally discovered pieces of paper during a routine trip, which Snoek threw out of an opening. The police, alerted, found Snoek tied around his neck with a chain and freed him. [27] A short time later, the Münster Regional Court sentenced one of the kidnappers involved [28] to 13 years' imprisonment.
1987 tank truck accident
On July 7, 1987, six people died and 38 were injured in a tank truck accident. At around 8:45 p.m., a tanker truck loaded with 34,000 liters of fuel overturned in a curve in front of an ice cream parlor as a result of a brake failure. The brakes of the trailer had failed on the B 255, which descended for kilometers into the village. The leaking fuel flowed into the sewer system, exploded, and set twelve houses on fire. The dill into which fuel had flowed was also on fire at around 500 m along with the bank vegetation. The professional fire brigade from Frankfurt am Main, approx. 100 km away, was also called in to carry out the extinguishing work.
Only after another accident on the same street was the downhill section that leads into the city given two chicanes that can only be driven through at a maximum of 30 km / h. Faster vehicles cannot follow the curve and are thus forced into an emergency lane filled with rolling gravel, in which the vehicles come to a standstill.
2015 police murder
On December 24, 2015, the 46-year-old police superintendent Christoph Rehm was killed by an intoxicated dodger with several knife stabs during a personal check in the Herborn train station, and a colleague who was also present was seriously injured. [29] The then 27-year-old perpetrator was finally sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, attempted murder and dangerous physical harm in August 2017, and the gravity of the guilt was determined, which rules out a release from prison after 15 years. [30]