It was at the end of February this year that a man in his 30s went after a girl in a grocery store on Tågaborg in Helsingborg. The man felt that the other customers in the grocery store were threatening to the girl and, according to the police’s preliminary investigation, shouted several times during the arrest that he was protecting the girl from, among other things, pedophiles.
Surveillance footage shows that the man followed the girl into the grocery store and, among other things, gives her a hug. The girl tried several times to walk away from the man but he continued to follow. Therefore, the man was charged with molestation – a charge that the district court acquitted the man of.
Attacked several customers
Right after that, it hit a snag. The man first attacked an elderly man at the cash register who, among other things, suffered a skull and nasal bone fracture. He then attacked five other people inside the store.
The man in his 30s has requested to be acquitted because he believed he was acting in self-defense – an assessment that the district court did not share. The man was sentenced to six counts of assault, one of which was aggravated, which is a reduction of the prosecutor’s charge of six counts of aggravated assault.
Influenced by drugs and suffering from psychosis
According to the verdict, the penalty value of the crimes corresponds to imprisonment for two years and four months. But according to a doctor’s report from the Swedish Medical Examiner’s Office, the man committed the acts under the influence of a serious mental disorder which is said to have been drug-induced.
As the man no longer suffers from a serious mental disorder, he cannot be sentenced to forensic psychiatric care. Therefore, the man is sentenced to probation and that he must undergo the treatment that the probation service deems appropriate. He must also pay a total of just over 240,000 kroner in damages to the people he attacked, including the girl because he agreed to do so.
The text is updated.