In March 2024, seventeen-year-olds disappeared Maya in Kinna in the municipality of Marks. The police were called in to search for her, and the search included a dog, a drone and a helicopter.
Finally a body that turned out to be Maja. Soon after, a 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder. The suspect himself denies the crime.
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Maja’s relatives are critical of the police
The police’s action was criticized early on, among others by Maja’s relatives who believed that the police should have started their search earlier.
During the same period, the police began an investigation into their actions in the search for Maja.
READ MORE: Maja, 17, found dead – same-age boy suspected of murder
After the murder of Maja, 17, in Mark – the police admit mistakes
– Was there anything we should have done differently? Is there something that we should look at in order to be able to give answers, especially to relatives, about what we did in the first days, said the commander of the police’s special operation Peter Sorstedt when.
The police in the search for Maja. Photo: Adam Ihse/TT.
The case received a lot of attention, including the criminologist Leif GW Persson spoke out.
– We have close to 20,000 people who are reported missing every year, in significantly fewer than one percent of them a crime has been committed. There must be very concrete circumstances that point to something in order to start looking early, and there were not in this case, said Persson in an interview with The Express.
READ MORE: Leif GW backs the police – after the murder of Maja, 17
Investigation shows: The police traced the wrong phone number
The police’s investigation into their efforts is now complete – and several shortcomings in the work are acknowledged.
In one press release the police clarify the following:
“However, the case was negatively affected by the fact that the initial information gathering did not capture the degree of vulnerability and risk that the girl’s disability entailed at the time of the disappearance. The case was also unfortunately characterized by the fact that the first tracking of the girl’s phone was done with an incorrectly registered phone number.”
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Police: Criminal investigation should have started earlier
The investigation also shows that the police lacked “a routine for obtaining positioning from companies such as Meta and Snapchat”. They also want to change the police’s routines to “increase the availability of the police for relatives in cases of disappearance.”
In addition, the police have concluded that there was more information that should have led to a criminal investigation earlier than was the case with Maja.