Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
This case takes place in stockholm sweden on the 2nd of august 2018.
Eric torell was raised in the suburb of vasastan in sweden. He was described as a kind and gentleman who loved his family.Eric had also had down syndrome a chromosomal condition that impacts physical and intellectual development
at 20 years ,Eric had the developmental age of a three year old, he couldn’t speek due to an additional diagnosis of autism and the only word hecould say was ” mum” .
his mother would later comment, Eric had no understanding of danger ,his starting point was that everyone was kind .
Because of his conditions he spent his time at home under the watchful supervision of his parents.But on wednesday the 1st august he decided to go out and play on his own.
It was in the middle of the night when Eric snuck out of the front door ,he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere by himself but there had a number of occasions where he managed to get out of his house and onto the street without anybody noticed him.
Before he left , Eric pick up a toy gun from his pile of toys.
In the early hours of the next morning, Eric’s mother woke up and realized that he had left the house. she immediately woke up her husband and they calledthe police to report their son missing and to give them information about Eric’s appearance and his mental capacity.
As soon she hung up the couple got dressed and headed out onto the streers to search for Eric due to Eric’s condition he couldn¨t walkt too far so they assumed that they would find him pretty quickly but tragicaly this wouldn’t be the case.
At around 4 am , the next morning thre police officers in the district were called to a disturbance inside a residential courtyard.
Residents had reported that a man was waving a gun around and behaving in a threatening manner ,when the officers arrived, they yelled at the man to put down his weapon .
they received no reply so they thired again but still there was no response from the man, it was of course Eric.The police began firing but they didn’t just fire one or two shots , round after round was fired into Eric.
In total more than 25 shots were fired towards Eric , witnesses would later report that it was like a hellfire of bullets.
At 5:45 am on the thursday morning, Eric was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eric shooting prompted an outcry in Sweden.
vigils and memorials where held all across the country .
and many citizens called for a review on the use of deadly force in policing.
Sweden has a population of around 10 milion people and in the past 20 years on average
one person a year has been shot to death by the police.
but in 2018 that number jumped to six people
compare that to the UK which has six times the population and yet only four to six death per year as a result of a police shooting
” Don’t forget what happened eric torell”
as the story picked up speed in the media, the officers involved in the shooting were reported t to have justified their actions by saying that eric was behaving in a threatening manner.
They claimed that he was a danger to others and that he was non -responsive to their demands. but eric’s mother katarina dismissed their statements, she claimed that the police would have been able to tell that eric had down syndrom
and that there was no way they could mistake him as a threat ,she said , he wasn¨t capable of being threatening ,the only thing he could to was hug and kiss. He was the kindest and most peaceful teddy bear in the world.
there was a problem with the statements taken from the police , lokal media reports stated that the officers had shot Eric three times in the stomack.
but the stories didn’t much up with the evidence.Eric had undergone an autopsy after his death and they found that he had been shot three times but that two of the shots had hit Eric in the back, the location of the gunshots wounds is a significant factor in this case.
if what the officers said was true and the reason they shot Eric was because he was a threat then surley they wouldhave shot him from the front. to shoot him in the back, means he was facing away from them at some point during the insident.
In fact one of these bullets in the back was the fatal wound which means he was alive when he turned around.
The evidence pointed to the fact that the officers had been misleading in their statements which means there was doubt about wheter the shooting was justified at all.
All officials who reviewed the shooting agree that there were no enough questions to justify takinga closer look.
And the swedish police authorities opened an investigation, the officers involved were immediately stood down whilst the circumstances surrounding the shooting were looked at more closely.
Ultimately the investigation concluded that the police were justified in opening fire on Eric. there was no way for them to know that the gun was not real or Eric’s developmental challenges were a factor Add to this the fact that their training dictated that they must neutralize a f threat in the most effective way possible , in other words -shoot to kill .
A Swedish officer told reporters ” we have learned to be offensive forward, forward until the perpetrater can no longer hurt others,if that’s means he needs to be shot to death then so be it.”
It is also important to note the type of ammunition used by the swedish police, the bullets expand on impact , this causes immediate and severe injuries which are intendedto stop the target instantly .
The report also determined that the officers should have stopped shooting Eric when he turned away from them as at this point he was only a minimal threat and there was no reason to continue firing at him .
if they had stopped at that point ,Eric may not have even died.The author of the report commented” i have decided that the police did not follow the procedures that they should have done and had they done so,they would have realized that Eric- the victim was not a threat”
Because of this investigation two of the officers involved in the shooting were later charged with negligence and misconduct and the third was charged with causing another person’s death.
allthough ,officers present during the shooting were not charged,during the trial the officers provided more context about what happened in the early hours of that day .
They stated that when the they first saw Eric they believed that he was a wanted suspect, who had violently attacked his partner and threatned to kill her.They didn’t know that the actual suspect had already been arrested and was locked up as the information about his arrest was not recorded on their police computers.
so when they turned up and saw Eric holding what they believed to be a gun
they assumed it was him
only moments before the shooting the officers had crossed paths with Eric’s dad. he was out looking for his son .theu spoke briefly but none of them realized that Eric was the reason the police had been called in the first place.
the officers also disputed the evidence about the location and sequence of the shots which killed Eric. In their argument they stated that there was no way to determine exactly what Eric’s position was when he was shot, even though the bullets were in his back .
They doubled down on their justification by saying that police make split -second decisions to protect the public and that is exactly what they were doing .
In october of 2019 , all three officers were acquitted of the charges against them and they were allowed to return to their positions.
Eric’s family disagreed with the verdicts but they accepted it .
Eric’s mother descriped her son as wonderful and the world’s most loving person .
she said:
“we are completely destroyed, we are in shock i can’t even believe it’s true, why did they have to kill him? why not just shot him in the foot”
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the case of Eric is a deeply distressing one , many have pushed for the reforms that prioritize the escalation and crisis intervention techniques, especially when dealing with people who have disabilities.it it particularly tragic to consider that something as simple as a toy gun was enough to trigger the chin of events that led to his untimely death.