Jakob was on his way home from a party on the night of January 14 when two masked people appeared and attacked him. He received close to 30 different injuries from a knife, a majority of which were cuts.
Shortly after the attack, two boys, aged 15 and 16, were arrested on suspicion of murder. Testimony, the murder weapon and a mobile phone film were used as evidence by the prosecutor in the district court and both young people were convicted of murder.
The 16-year-old is sentenced to two years and ten months in closed youth care, the 15-year-old to two years and four months. Both prosecutors and the convicted boys’ lawyers appealed the district court’s decision.
Now the Court of Appeal has announced its verdict: the court upholds the district court’s verdict for murder against the 16-year-old, but changes the classification for the 15-year-old, who is instead convicted of aggravated assault.
Has denied murder
The 16-year-old has always denied being guilty of murder, that his intention was only to scare and beat Jakob. But the Court of Appeal believes that it is clear that the 16-year-old handed out all the stab wounds, while the 15-year-old hit the victim in the head with a soft airgun.
– The large number of stabbings already speaks strongly that the intention with the use of violence at the moment of the act was that the 16-year-old would die, says Court of Appeal advisor Karoline Fridolf, in a press release from the Court of Appeal over Skåne and Blekinge.
– The plan to injure and threaten the 16-year-old was already fulfilled through the initial attack at the viaduct, but despite that, the older of the defendants did not come to his senses, but followed him up the stairs and continued to inflict several stab wounds.
The 15-year-old was convicted in the district court of murder even though he did not use the deadly violence. The district court justified it with the fact that the boys armed themselves together and that the 15-year-old could be considered so involved in the preparations and during the attack itself that he intended to kill Jakob. The Court of Appeal makes a different assessment.
The sentencing value is equivalent to imprisonment for seven months for aggravated assault, but due to the long period of detention, the 15-year-old was released after the Court of Appeal trial ended.
The family wanted to see tougher sentences
Jakob’s family has previously told SVT Nyheter Helsingborg that they wanted the Court of Appeal to toughen the sentence, that the young people should be sentenced as adults.
– It is a nightmare to wait for him every day and know that he will not come home. There are no longer a lot of young people here, no laughter and life, Jakob’s mother Camilla Hall told SVT Nyheter Helsingborg this summer.