Burglars caught in Hungary after three-nation chase

A high-speed international police chase across three countries ended with the capture of two dual Hungarian-Romanian citizens who stole a safe from an apartment in Germany and escaped with its contents to Hungary via Austria, the police said on its website on Tuesday.

The suspects stole the safe on Jan. 4 and then pried it open in a forest, the Komárom-Esztergom County police department said in a statement.

The two men then fled to Austria in a BMW with three guns, a shotgun and the jewellery they removed from the safe. Austrian police pursued the suspects all the way to the border and alerted Hungarian police of the chase. The suspects managed to evade checks at the Hegyeshalom border crossing and made it into Hungary.

Patrol officers then spotted the BMW with a German licence plate on the M1 motorway leading to Budapest, but the car veered off the motorway towards Tata.

As the suspects tried to evade the Tata patrol officers, their car skidded off the road and came to a halt in a field.

Police arrested the two 38-year-old men near their car and seized their weapons and the stolen jewellery. Győr-Moson-Sopron County police found the shotgun the suspects had attempted to hide in Jánossomorja near the Austrian border.

Criminal proceedings have been launched against both men. The investigation is being carried out jointly by Hungarian, Austrian and German authorities.

Source: MTI