Nordallee

Trier is 40 minutes from Luxembourg City by train. Many people who work in Luxembourg live there. Many Luxembourgish students study there. It is close enough that news from Trier feels local, not foreign. On July 17, a 29-year-old student was last heard from by her mother. Two days later, police found her dead in her apartment on Nordallee, a street near the university and the main station. An autopsy confirmed she had not died of natural causes.[1]

Nearly two weeks of silence followed. Police released few details, which is standard procedure when suspects are unknown and investigators need to keep certain information private, details that only the perpetrator would know. On Thursday, two arrests were reported. A 35-year-old man was arrested in Völklingen, in the Saarland, and a woman was also taken into custody. According to the Trierischer Volksfreund, the man is suspected of stabbing the student to death for financial gain.[2]

What makes this harder to process is that it is not an isolated event. Just days before the student was killed, another Trier student was fatally stabbed in the street near the university. Police believe the two cases are unrelated. Two killings, the same city, the same month, the same demographic: students. Trier is a university town of around 110'000 people. It is not a place where you expect this kind of violence, once, let alone twice.

Nordallee is a normal street. It has apartment buildings, a hotel, proximity to the train station and the university campus. The kind of address that does not register as dangerous. That is what makes it unsettling. Violence does not always come with a warning. It does not always happen in the places you have already decided to be afraid of.

The investigation is still ongoing. Police have confirmed the arrests but have not yet released an official statement. More information is expected. For now, the details are sparse: a 29-year-old student, a mother who reported her missing, an apartment on Nordallee, two suspects, and a city that is grieving twice in one month.