A nine-year-old Swedish girl was the victim of a brutal murder attempt at a playground in the Swedish industrial town of Skellefteå. A 13-year-old Ethiopian boy, already notorious in the community, has been accused of the crime by local police.
The little girl remains in a coma, with photos released by the family showing her surrounded by stuffed animals in a local hospital bed. The teen suspect, who was granted permanent residence status just a week before the attack, beat the young girl at 5:30 p.m. last Thursday at the Morö Backe school. Police and emergency services arrived on scene after the attack.
“It is a serious crime, attempted murder, and those involved are children. The victim is a girl under 15 years old. Then, there is a suspect, a boy who is also under 15 years old,” Lars Persson, the acting local police chief, told Swedish newspaper Samnytt.
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“It is a little different area of the law we have to work with, which deals with young offenders. There are parents of both of those involved that we must take into account,” he said. “If we had talked about adults, the suspect might have been arrested or detained right after the crime. But there are slightly different conditions, and there may be other authorities involved in view of their age.”
Two witnesses, Agnes Westmark and Thomas Lundquist, identified the suspect as a 13-year-old boy from Ethiopia. According to the Swedish newspaper, the 9-year-old victim remains unconscious.
No arrest
Since the suspect is 13 years old, he has neither been arrested nor detained, according to police. Instead, it is up to the social authorities to “help” the family with support and care efforts.
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There are also questions from the community about the boy’s true age, as many migrants lie about their age in order to obtain benefits and avoid deportation. Many in the community believe that the suspect should be detained for the attempted murder of the little girl.
“Should such a person be allowed to go unpunished? Should that one remain in the country? Here we pay contributions to them, and then they come here and misbehave. It is completely inconceivable,” one unnamed parent told the Samnytt news outlet.
This parent says they are afraid that more girls in Skellefteå will be exposed to the Ethiopian boy:
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“I’m afraid they will cover up the whole issue, and then that bastard goes free, and soon he is on to the next victim,” said the anonymous parent.
The suspect just received permanent residence
The boy is notorious in the community for his behavior and has been moved around to different schools before being placed in a special class.
A parent of a child who went to the same school as the 13-year-old tells Samnytt that many parents are upset that they have not been informed about the 13-year-old’s presence in the school, especially because of the problems he has caused for other girls.
“What I get pissed off about is that you do not get any information,” says the parent. “It’s dangerous.”
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The boy, his little sister and their parents came to Sweden from Ethiopia in the summer of 2017. With them was also a young male relative who was classified as an “unaccompanied refugee child” and whose parents are said to be in prison in their home country.
The Ethiopian group applied for a residence permit on July 6, 2017, and everyone except the father was granted a temporary residence permit in November of the following year.
Since then, the family had another boy that was born in April 2018, and then a fifth child, a girl, in May this year.
The 13-year-old suspect was granted a permanent residence permit on June 30 this year. His mother has also applied for an extension which has not yet been granted.
