Child Gunman Shot Six in Gävle - Court Rules No Murder Attempt

GÄVLE - Prosecutors wanted the 13-year-old gunman found guilty of trying to murder 29 people in a mass shooting in central Gävle.

Gävle District Court disagreed. It ruled that he committed aggravated assault against the six people his bullets hit - and nothing more.

Because he was under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden, he cannot be punished at all.

The shooting happened at around 1.30 am on 4 October last year, outside the bars on Södra Kungsgatan. Witnesses saw a masked youth with a pistol point it at a group of people, lower it again and pace up and down the street. Several said he looked nervous.

Then he opened fire. With two pistols, the child soldier fired nine shots. Six people were hit.

On Thursday, more than a year later, the court found that he had committed six counts of aggravated assault.

Since he cannot be tried as a criminal, the case was heard as a special evidentiary trial. The court only establishes what crimes the boy committed. No sentence can follow.

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"They thought they were dying"

Lawyer Isidor Vistedt represents three of those who were shot. For them, the court's verdict is hard to square with what they lived through on the street that night.

The feeling my clients had at the scene, that they were dying, is not reflected in the ruling at all.

- Isidor Vistedt to the local paper Gefle Dagblad

According to Vistedt, his clients feel betrayed - both by how the court judged the shooting and by the compensation they will get.

One of the victims, who says he has suffered lasting injuries, had claimed 310,000 kronor in damages for attempted murder.

Compensation cut in half

The six who were shot are awarded just 382,110 kronor between them, plus interest. The amounts range from 51,600 to 82,095 kronor per person.

And once the court had worked out the damages, it cut them in half. Among the reasons it gave: the shooter's young age, the fact that he has no income or assets, and that older criminals had in all likelihood used him.

The other 23 people prosecutors say were in the line of fire got nothing. The court did not find it proven that the boy intended to kill or injure them.

Lawyer Carina Abrahamsson, who represents seven of those who escaped the bullets, says the trial has been hard on her clients. For them, compensation would also have been a form of redress.

"Aimed for the legs"

The key question in court was what the 13-year-old intended when he pulled the trigger.

He admitted aggravated assault on the six who were hit but denied trying to kill anyone. Before the shooting, he said, he had decided he did not want to take a life for money. So he aimed at their legs.

The court found some support for that story. All six were hit in the legs or feet, one also in the forearm. Witness accounts of how he first raised the gun and then lowered it were also taken into account.

That he fired anyway could be explained, according to the court, by the fact that he was on the phone with the people who sent him the whole time, and they were probably pressuring him to go through with it.

Even a shot to the leg can kill. But given the boy's age and immaturity, the court said it was unclear whether he understood that risk, and it was not proven that he did not care whether someone died.

Several of the injuries were serious, but the court concluded that none was immediately life-threatening. That also ruled out the prosecutors' alternative charge of exceptionally aggravated assault.

Gang boss arrested in Iraq

In a separate investigation, gang criminal Ali Shehab is suspected of ordering this shooting and several others. He is described as a key figure around Rawa Majid, the so-called "Kurdish Fox" who leads the Foxtrot network.

Shehab has been remanded in his absence in Sweden. According to prosecutor Helene Gestrin, he was arrested in Iraq late last year and Sweden has requested his extradition. No decision has been made.

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He told school staff about the plan

The day before the shooting, the 13-year-old told a teaching assistant that he was going to shoot someone in Gävle that evening. The assistant testified that the boy had joked about such things before.

When he repeated the plan after lunch, the assistant contacted social services.

His parents also raised the alarm when he did not come home. A few hours before the shooting, a decision was made to take him into care immediately. Police searched for him but did not find him before the shots were fired.

Messages on his phone later showed the preparations. On Signal, one of his contacts discussed how he could slip out of his home in the evening and come back after the job.

At 12.52 am, less than an hour before the shooting, he was told that the intended targets were inside a pub. Investigators have not been able to establish who they were. None of the six who were shot is believed to have been the target.

One of the guns belonged to the police

When the boy was arrested shortly after the shooting, he no longer had the pistols. The following spring one of them turned up in a different investigation in Uppsala.

It was a 9mm SIG Sauer engraved with the words "Property of the Police".

The National Forensic Centre linked the pistol to the shooting by comparing marks on bullets and cartridge cases from the scene. DNA on the gun was, with very strong support, the boy's.

Prosecutor Jenny Örn, who ran the case with her colleague Fredrik Normark, says prosecutors and the court largely agree on who fired and what happened. It is the shooter's intent that divides them.

Prosecutors have three weeks to decide whether to appeal.