19-year-old sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in Vasastan

It was just after 21:00 on Wednesday, September 13 that the shots echoed at the intersection between Vanadisvägen and Västmannagatan in Vasastan in central Stockholm. Several people witnessed how a masked man dressed in black shot a 19-year-old young man from behind and then left the scene.

According to several witnesses, the shooter then allegedly went back and tried to fire more shots – to eventually flee the scene.

The 19-year-old died from his injuries and a large number of people witnessed the incident. According to the prosecutor, the incident was part of the conflict between two phalanxes in the former Foxtrot network – an assessment that the Stockholm district court now also supports.

On Thursday morning, the verdict was handed down where the 19-year-old man now receives a life sentence for murder. According to the district court, the man planned the murder together with others, got a getaway car and then drove the “shooter” to the crime scene and then also drove the person from there. “The district court has found that his role overall has been so central that he is to be regarded as an accomplice to the murder,” explains the Stockholm district court’s life sentence against the man.

The execution of the murder is described as “an execution”.

An 18-year-old woman is sentenced to ten years in prison in the same case for aiding and abetting murder. According to the district court, she tricked the murder victim to the scene and the action is described as decisive for the murder to be carried out at the time.

A third co-defendant – a 17-year-old boy at the time – is fully acquitted.

The two convicted persons deny responsibility, saying they did not know a murder would be committed.

The shooting in Vasastan later turned out to be part of what the prosecutor has described as a “murder tour” that started in Malmö, where all three defendants in the case are natives. Two of the defendants then traveled in a rental car together with a third person from Malmö on 11 September. Just over a day later, at 04:15 on the morning of September 13, a home in Stenhagen in Uppsala was shelled where a person connected to the Foxtrot leader Rawa Majid was written.

– We were on the scene quite quickly after that and were then able to arrest a young man. He also had a weapon on him that was confiscated, said Magnus Jansson Klarin, press spokesperson for the police, to DN at the time.

The arrested person was the 17-year-old who was acquitted in the current verdict at the Stockholm district court – but he was sentenced for the shooting in Uppsala to four years of closed youth care at the end of December. The verdict was later confirmed by the Svea Court of Appeal.

It turned out later that precisely the 19-year-old who has now been sentenced to life imprisonment was also involved in the shooting in Uppsala, although he escaped the police at the time. Later, he too would be sentenced for attempted murder and received ten years’ imprisonment in the Court of Appeal.

Although he escaped being caught at the time of the crime, he was stopped later on the morning of September 13 by the police – but only on suspicion of drunken driving. The rental car he was driving was impounded and the 19-year-old was taken to Sankt Göran’s hospital to give a blood sample, but was later released. According to the verdict, he then spent the day in the area around Fridhemsplan in central Stockholm.

A few hours later, the 19-year-old participated in the murder in Vasastan, according to the verdict that came down on Thursday.

According to the prosecutor, the “murder tour” also included an attempted murder in Norrköping on September 14 – but none of the people now convicted have been convicted in that case.

The 19-year-old was later arrested in Malmö later the same day, September 14.