Direct Report · Eric Torell Trial

Post

35 min08.26

Today, the trial of the shooting death of Eric Torell begins. SVT News reports here during the day starting at 9 am.

SVT · Iva Horvatovic

On the night of August 2, 2018, Eric Torell escaped from his father's residence in Vasastan, Stockholm. With him, the 20-year-old, who has autism and Down syndrome, brought a plastic toy weapon.

At the same time, police were alerted to a man seen with automatic weapons in the same area. When they met Eric Torell, they perceived him as threatening.

- Goal-owner goes into the courtyard, turns to one of the police and raises the weapon, and then the police open fire, chief prosecutor Martin Tidén has described the course of events earlier.

25 shots were fired and three met Eric Torell who died from his injuries. Following the incident, the police made a report to the Special Investigations Department and Chief Prosecutor Martin Tidén filed charges against three police officers on April 12 this year.

According to him, it is proven that the plastic weapon Eric wore looked real and that police are not able to check if a weapon is genuine or not when they are threatened. According to the prosecution, the police were in an imaginary emergency situation and it is therefore not wrong that they started shooting.

After each shot, however, police must check for legal reasons to continue shooting. It is called impact control and is about checking whether the threat you are trying to protect is eliminated or not. Something Martin Tidén thinks that the police who fired guns did not.

- I can prove that two police officers fired fire because the bullets hit their backs, but none of the police have seen Eric turn their backs on them. The police should have seen and stopped shooting, Martin Tidén said in connection with the prosecution.

An important point for the right to decide is thus whether or not emergency lifting is possible.

- The most central thing is whether the police act in self-defense or not. Then the prosecutor says they didn't do it when the killing shot hit. The prosecutor says that if Eric Torell stood with his back to the police he could not have posed a threat and then you had no right to shoot, says SVT reporter Johan Pisoni, who is in the district court.

- The defense has called in an expert and will try to claim that he was shot from the side when the killing shot hit him.

Three police officers shot Eric Torell, but only the two police officers whose bullets entered the back of the body have been prosecuted. This is because it is not possible to prove that the third police shot when Eric Torell must have turned.

One of them is prosecuted for malpractice, the other for wrongful death or another malpractice.

The third defendant is the interim chief, who did not participate in the shooting. The intervention manager is charged with malpractice, among other things for having failed in his role of leading the work according to the routines that exist.

All three of the prosecutors deny crime.