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Austria Now News – Austria | The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) announced on Monday evening that cases of metal objects being found in sweets collected by children on Halloween night have spread to three Austrian provinces – Upper Austria, Styria and Lower Austria – and that it is examining whether the cases are connected and coordinating the investigations. It urged parents to check sweets before eating them.
Cases in Linz and Vöcklamarkt
The most serious case so far remains in Linz, where a 28-year-old father found nails about one centimetre long inside chocolate bars and gummy sweets his children had collected in the Linz-Oed district. According to police, some of the nails were visible from the outside, while others were buried inside the sweets and could not be seen. The sweets are suspected to have been tampered with by hand. An investigation is under way on suspicion of intentional grievous bodily harm.
In the municipality of Vöcklamarkt in the Vöcklabruck district, a mother told police that her 11-year-old daughter had collected a chocolate bar and a gummy sweet on Saturday evening, each of which is believed to have contained a thick needle. According to police, the girl bit into one of the pieces but was not injured.
Styria and Lower Austria
In Styria, police confirmed four cases in the Weiz and Leibnitz districts, with no injuries reported, without specifying the type of metal objects. On Monday evening, sweets prepared with metal objects also turned up in the Amstetten district of Lower Austria, with authorities due to release further details on Tuesday.
The Federal Criminal Police Office said in a statement that police were taking the incidents seriously and that investigations were proceeding at full speed. It added that, based on the current state of the investigations, there were so far no indications of a link between the reported cases.
Police advice for parents
The office urged parents to check in particular whether sweet wrappers were damaged or had been tampered with, and whether they contained foreign objects, especially metal ones, and to notify police immediately if they noticed anything suspicious. It remains unclear whether similar cases in Germany over the weekend or social media may have encouraged the acts.
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Sources
- ORF: Mehrere Funde von Metall in Süßigkeiten, 02.11.2026, https://orf.at/stories/3446903/
- noe.ORF.at: Metall in Halloween-Süßigkeiten im Bezirk Amstetten, 02.11.2026, https://noe.orf.at/stories/3377863/
