The 56-year-old used a stolen military weapon, the AK4 automatic carbine, in the shooting drama that began just before 1pm on April 18.
Shortly after the first police patrol arrived in the forest area in Alingsås municipality, the man opened fire on the three policemen.
– It’s hitting right next to us here now! It’s banging right next to the car, one of the officers told the command center and was forced to retreat.
– Go! Go! Go!
On Wednesday, the Alingsås district court sentenced the 56-year-old to four and a half years in prison for three cases of serious threat to an official, serious weapons crime and arson. He was also convicted of vandalism in another case.
The court noted that a number of the shots passed “very close to the policemen” but held that it has not been proven that the purpose was to kill the three policemen. The court therefore did not accept the prosecutor’s first request, that the man should be sentenced for attempted murder, but instead chose to see the action as a threat.
Police: “Let me say goodbye to my child”
TV4 Nyheterna has previously been able to publish the film from the police helicopter and the dramatic radio traffic from the several-hour operation where the police officers feared for their lives.
– When we sat in the forest and heard all the automatic fire, you didn’t feel so big. Be prepared that I wouldn’t come home and that I won’t be able to say goodbye to my child, said one of the policemen during questioning later.
The drama ended after three hours, at 3:30 p.m., when the task force shot down the 56-year-old. By then the man had fired over 40 shots.
Until 5 p.m., the emergency services worked to put out fires that the man started in the forest area. The conflagrations started after he fired weapons with tracer ammunition in the terrain, something the classification of arson refers to when the district court verdict was announced.
The three police officers who were shot at have received crisis support. Both the police management and the prosecutor have stated that it was about “very small margins” that it could have ended in the murder of the policemen.
About the motive behind the act, senior prosecutor Andreas Lennartsson has previously said:
– It is rooted in a bad mental state which led to him losing custody and right of access to his children. Based on that, he has cultivated some kind of conspiracy where he felt opposed by the municipality and, by extension, the police. To some extent also felt monitored. It has developed into what can be expressed as some form of grudge against the municipality and the judiciary in general.