Vienna  - It was case of litterally tracking down a suspect for Austrian police early Monday, when a suspected burglar left marks in the snow leading straight from a break-in in the Upper Austria province across the German border to his garage.

Local police said the 21-year-old suspect was found asleep in his bed in the German hamlet of Messnerschlag, along with cigarettes believed to have been stolen some six kilometres away at a petrol station in Kollerschlag, across the Austrian border.

There were no other tracks in the fresh snow at around 2 a. m. (0100 GMT), police said. Under the Schengen agreement, many European countries including Austria and Germany allow police to follow suspects into neighbouring border areas. (dpa)