An 18-year-old Iraqi migrant has been detained in Sweden on suspicion of murdering Mikael Janicki, a Polish national who was shot dead in front of his 12-year-old son as they were cycling towards a swimming pool in southern Stockholm last month.
Mohammed Khalid Mohammed Mohammed was arrested at his home in Skärholmen on Tuesday and remains in police custody.
A police source, cited by the Swedish news outlet Samnytt, confirmed the suspect had been criminally active for at least two years and had already been suspected of four robberies, attempted theft, assault, vandalism, and multiple drug offenses.
He had previously been convicted in 2022 for drug-related offenses and was charged last year with robbery after stolen goods were found in his possession after a search of his home.
Well known to the authorities, the Iraqi-born suspect arrived in Sweden with his family in 2007. He acquired Swedish citizenship five years later.
At the age of 15, he was taken into state care due to the “abuse of addictive substances, criminal activity, and socially destructive behavior,” social service documents seen by the Swedish press revealed.
A hearing on whether the suspect’s detention will be extended is expected to take place on Wednesday afternoon.
As Mohammed was under the age of 18 at the time of the murder, he would be tried as a minor and as such could receive a much shorter custodial sentence with a maximum of eight years.
The suspect is accused of being part of a gang that confronted the 40-year-old victim and his son in an underpass as they cycled to a nearby swimming pool on April 10.
Swedish newspaper Expressen reported how the gang threatened the man and his son, leading the protective father to ask his son to keep his distance while he returned to the gang and confronted them.
He was subsequently shot dead with a single bullet to the head.
Sadly, the Polish national became another statistic amid the exponential rise in fatal shootings across Sweden in recent years.
In 2022, a total of 391 shootings were reported in Sweden, of which a record 62 were fatal, surpassing the 45 firearm fatalities recorded the previous year. Last year, the number fell slightly with 53 fatal shootings out of a total of 363 firearms incidents.
