Germany - Postwoman jailed for throwing 800 letters away

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Postwoman jailed for throwing 800 letters away

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A postwoman has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after she was found guilty of throwing away over 800 letters instead of delivering them.

The 24-year-old, who had a criminal record including seven convictions for fraud and six for theft, but still got a job at Deutsche Post, was accused of the deed when hundreds of letters went missing last June, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Wednesday.

Around 400 letters were found washed up on the bank of the Ennepe river in Hagen, near Dortmund, between June 1st and June 12th. A further two bundles of between 100 and 200 letters were left in rubbish bins and 86 others had just been thrown into a hedge.

And of the two postal workers usually responsible for the town's seventh district that week, only she was on duty, making her the only suspect.

Despite this she consistently denied destroying the letters in her charge.

"It could have been anyone," she said. "It could have been another employee trying to get rid of me."

The postwoman resigned from her job six weeks after joining the postal service, telling her employer in a text message: "I can't do it anymore. I don't want to anymore. I won't come anymore."

The court in Hagen dismissed her story of a mysterious stranger committing the crime to frame her as "cooked up".

"There's no such thing," said presiding judge Manfred Kleeschulte. "The crime was in fact a mixture of stress, insolence and stupidity."