Victim of a suspected arson: Moussa was only four years old
He turned four on May 6th. He died a week ago on Monday night in a fire on the vacant ground floor of a residential building in Wilhelmshaven's pedestrian zone. He lived there in the attic with his mother and five older siblings. The public prosecutor's office suspects arson. On Wednesday, police announced they had identified a suspect in a homicide.
Jessica Obame Angoue knows the family from her work for the Africa Union in Wilhelmshaven, which she founded. She has helped the 37-year-old mother with problems with authorities and her landlord and has translated for her. 34-year-old Issouf Touré is a close friend of the mother and has been with her and her 16- and 18-year-old daughters in the hospital all week. The taz newspaper met him and Jessica Obame Angoue on Thursday in a café by the bridge over the Ems-Jade Canal. Issouf Touré says he hardly sleeps, and that the night before he just cried. He often doesn't know where he is. "I'm completely confused."
There's always something to do: phone calls to make, emails to answer. During the conversation in the café, the Embassy of Côte d'Ivoire calls, wanting to speak with the mother. Before the meeting with taz, he went to the apartment with two police officers to retrieve documents. He returns with several bags and a suitcase, none of which contain much. "Everything is sooty and smells of smoke," he says.
A fundraising campaign for the family had raised nearly €33,000 by Sunday evening. It was initiated by Jessica Obame Angoue, along with Wilma Nyari , a Wilhelmshaven decolonization activist who was present at the meeting. She also supports the family. The two women also organized a memorial service, which took place Friday evening in front of the uninhabitable house on Marktstrasse. According to the Wilhelmshavener Zeitung, 100 people attended. Next door, in front of a former arcade, there are stuffed animals, flowers, and candles.
The mother and her eldest daughters were scheduled to be released from the hospital on Monday. They had actually planned to move into a new apartment near Bremen two days earlier. Now it's unclear where they will stay and who will cover the costs. The city's press officer initially said they would be placed in emergency accommodation. But on Friday, she wrote in an email that the landlord was responsible and had been informed of the situation. If, "contrary to expectations, he fails to take action, we will endeavor to find suitable accommodation (for example, in a vacation apartment) and bill him for the costs."
Furthermore, the youth welfare office will "offer the family trauma-educational support." In a press release after the night of the fire, non-partisan mayor Carsten Feist first thanked the emergency services before expressing regret over the child's death, before returning to the emergency services. Crisis intervention teams will be deployed to assist them "immediately after the end of the operation to help them process what they have experienced." He continued: "They can also take advantage of this psychosocial support in the coming days and weeks as needed." Not a word about assistance for the family.
Issouf Touré, friend of the family of the deceased Moussa
Until she herself is discharged, the mother cannot visit her three youngest surviving children for insurance reasons. They are six, seven, and nine years old and are spread across hospitals in Bremen and Oldenburg. Only their separated father has visited them so far. As of Thursday, the three still don't know that their brother is dead.
Issouf Touré says the mother initially thought all four were dead. He turns away briefly to regain his composure. It took the fire department a long time to find the unconscious children in the smoke-filled apartment. The mother and her two older daughters were only able to escape by climbing onto the roof, without the little ones.
On Friday, the spokesperson corrected the city's previous statement that firefighters had rescued four adults from the attic. In fact, it was the mother and her two teenage daughters; a fourth person was never found. Wilma Nyari rolls her eyes. "White people often can't tell us apart," she says, "someone was probably counted twice." Furthermore, people perceived as Black are often mistaken for being older than they are. "A 16-year-old and an 18-year-old quickly become two grown women."
It's important to Wilma Nyari and Jessica Obame Angoue that racism be discussed in connection with the fire. Whether it was a racist attack is unclear. Suspicion is plausible because two large families with immigrant backgrounds live in the house: a family from Vietnam with six children, as another resident recounts on TikTok . And in the attic, the mother of the dead boy lives with her six children. She is from the Ivory Coast and is Black.
A note here: The taz capitalizes "Black" "to clarify that it is a constructed pattern of classification and not a real 'characteristic' that can be traced back to skin color," as stated in an article by the Black People in Germany initiative . And: "Being Black is also associated with the experience of being perceived in a certain way."
This perception is associated with devaluation in Germany. Therefore, says Wilma Nyari, it's not important whether someone deliberately set fire to this house. It's enough that this is even conceivable: A child dies, his parents and siblings are severely traumatized – because their skin is more pigmented than that of some other people. Just two months ago, police in Oldenburg shot and killed a 21-year-old Black man.
Yes, she's scared, says Jessica Obame Angoue, especially for her children. Others in the Black community feel the same way. She'd been feeling this way before Monday, but now, especially many are contacting her with their concerns. She herself gave her caretaker flowers after the fire and thanked her. "She always makes sure the doors are locked at night." She also does her job and is friendly.
Moussa's mother had a different experience, reports Issouf Touré. "There was mold in the apartment, cockroaches came out in the evenings, and there was no hot water for two months." When she asked for help, the caretaker, who has since left, insulted her. "You don't deserve to live here," he told her. And if there were smoke detectors in the apartment, they either didn't go off at all or went off much too late, as the neighbor says in her TikTok video.
Issouf Touré asks as he leaves: “Why did this happen? Why?”
*Last name changed
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