Brueckner was grabbed by dad ‘after exposure at playground’
MADELEINE McCann suspect Christian Brueckner indecently exposed himself to a girl of 11 before her dad grabbed him to stop him fleeing, a court heard.
The convicted paedophile allegedly pulled down his trousers by a playground in the Portuguese town of Sao Bartolomeu de Messines in 2017.
The court heard how the girl ran to her dad nearby and told him what happened.
He sped around 164ft to make sure Brueckner could not make off and found him “pretending to make a mobile phone call using a packet of cigarettes”.
The electrician, 53, said: “I asked him what he was doing and he did not answer and gave me no reason for being there so I called the police.
“I spoke to him in Portuguese and he tried to speak English.
“I called the police and I grabbed him, held him there until they came.
“We did not exchange a word from that point on. But I kept him there.” Officers arrived and spoke about Brueckner being involved in “other incidents of paedophilia”, he told the German court via videolink.
Brueckner is standing trial for five offences in Portugal’s Algarve, including the alleged rape of an Irish tour rep in her flat in Praia da Rocha in 2004.
The German’s charges include the alleged rapes of a teenage girl in his Praia da Luz home and of an elderly woman in her apartment.
He is also accused of exposing himself to a German girl on a beach in Salema in April 2007. Madeleine, then three and from Leicestershire, was on a family holiday in Praia da Luz when she vanished on May 3, 2007.
Breaking down, the daughter, now 18, said Brueckner had exposed himself to her with other children playing nearby.
She said: “I did not understand then but now I know that he was holding his intimate parts.”
The teenager said he performed an indecent act but at the time “I did not know what he was doing. I ran straight to my father.”
Wept
Brueckner was allegedly seen with his trousers down. The girl wept as she testified to the court in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, where he had been living prior to his arrest.
Madeleine vanished while her parents were dining out at a tapas restaurant. Brueckner denies any involvement in her disappearance. He is serving seven years for raping a pensioner. The trial continues.