Cracker on New Year’s Eve – grid square on the border creates a “bomb” balance

The fun can be deadly – but all the warnings against buying illegal fireworks in the Czech Republic are of little use. That is why the police – again – use grid squares. Checks at the northern border took place on Sunday. 605 vehicles were checked. The law enforcement officers each issued six body mandates for fireworks, traffic and immigration law and filed 18 declarations for the import of fireworks, ten reports under traffic law and four reports under immigration law.

Mainly young men as buyers
A total of 46 pyrotechnic objects with a total weight of 76 kilograms were seized. The total net explosive mass was 17.6 kilograms – this equates to an almost unbelievable 5.3 kilograms of explosives. But who buys and shoots around with this life-threatening stuff on “Hell come out”? Police explosives expert Markus Kreilmeier says: “We rarely catch Mühlviertler. Most of them are teenagers and young men from the metropolitan area, i.e. Linz, Linz-Land, Wels, Vöcklabruck.” Many fireworks fans have a migration background.

Ball bombs are popular
And what is the favorite thing to buy and smuggle? Kreilmeier knows this too: “Especially fireworks or bullet bombs of classes F3 and F4. You have to do an internship here in Austria to use them. This means that there are always the most serious accidents – like in 2019 in Eberschwang, where a 17-year-old died from a bullet bomb.” Educational postscript: “We don’t want to patronize people, we want to protect them from themselves.”