Police in Lower Austria stopped two Georgian suspects on the A4 before dawn after a break-in attempt in Vienna's Landstraße district ended in flight by car. The two men were arrested without any loot, and investigators say the stop was the first major success in a burglary series that has run through Vienna for more than four years.
The case matters now because the pattern behind it has grown into a long-running citywide problem. Since 2022, the group has broken into nearly 150 apartments with salpeteric acid, and the latest wave alone hit at least 18 homes during the summer holidays. Among those affected was Andrea Johanides, who said she tries to protect nature and even picks up trash on the street, only to find herself facing a crime that leaves etched doors and ruined parquet floors behind.
The method is methodical. The burglars first scout houses and mark them floor by floor with thin adhesive threads on the door frame to see whether residents are away on vacation. They are said to be after cash, gold and jewelry, not the apartments themselves, which is why the damage can be so severe while the theft is relatively small. Several addresses were hit in the latest wave, including Inzersdorfer Straße, Heigerleinstraße, Alszeile, Luzegasse, Mendelssohngasse, Stavangergasse, Speckbachergasse and Holbeingasse.
That is what makes the arrests useful but not yet decisive. The police caught a 42-year-old man and his two-years-younger accomplice shortly after 2 a.m. as they were etching several door locks with acid in a house in Hafengasse in the dritter Bezirk, and stopped them shortly before 5 a.m. on the A4 after they fled toward Bratislava. But the two men are likely not part of the group that emptied 18 apartments in July, which leaves the wider network intact even after the first clear police hit.
The suspects are believed to have entered Austria only a few days earlier, either via Bratislava or directly via Schwechat, a sign of how quickly the operation can move across borders. For now, the arrests show that the method can be interrupted on the road, but they do not yet answer the harder question: whether the bigger crew behind the summer wave has been found, or only a pair that happened to be caught in the act.
