The wheelchair-bound man is blind and paralyzed from the hip down, writes The north. He lives in Skellefteå and receives help from a personal assistant to cope with everyday life. He can also alert the home service, should something happen when the assistant is not there.
The man’s personal assistant, a man in his 50s, was employed by a private care company. One day at the end of May, he came to work drunk, after “drinking alcohol for three days straight” according to the verdict from the Skellefteå district court.
Abused on the toilet floor
The assistant helped the man to “get up from sitting to standing and into the toilet with a lifting aid”. When the man was then left alone to sit on the toilet, he fell and landed on the floor. He called out for help, but got no answer. When the assistant entered the bathroom, he instead began to strangle the man.
The man says he was strangled and hit in the face twice with an open hand. When the assistant left the toilet, he was left lying on the floor.
The man managed to get out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where he pressed the alarm button for the home services. When home care staff came to the rescue, they found the man on the floor below his bed. The assistant was heavily drunk and the apartment was “full of snuff and beer cans”.
The home service called the police, but the personal assistant disappeared from the apartment before they could arrive.
Broke into the apartment
Later that night the assistant returned. After breaking open a key box, the assistant managed to get into the apartment. According to him, he wanted to get hold of his mobile phone which he had forgotten, but was told that the police had seized it.
Two days later, the assistant was arrested by the police. In questioning, he claims that he never abused the man, but only tried to help him up from the floor by grabbing his neck and lifting him.
The assistant also says that he started drinking alcohol only after the incident in the toilet. Regarding the break-in, he believes that he never intended to enter the apartment illegally.
But despite this, the district court convicts the assistant of gross breach of domestic peace and assault. For this, he receives eight months in prison and must pay around SEK 39,000 in damages.
According to the verdict, the assistant has lost his job and needs help with his alcohol addiction.