Officers fired 25 shots at Eric Torell in August 2018 as he played with a toy gun

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

A Stockholm court has acquitted police officers who fired 25 shots at a man with Down’s syndrome while he played with a toy gun.

Prosecutors charged three officers with negligence and misconduct in the events leading up to the fatal shooting of Eric Torell, 20, in August 2018. But the court was unable to establish with certainty that the police were wrong to use lethal force.

Sweden grapples with fatal police shooting of man with Down's syndrome Read more

“It may seem remarkable that the police fired a total of 25 shots at the time,” the court’s chief counsel, Erik Lindberg, said in a statement. “[But] neither the medical nor the technical investigation has been able to establish the order of the shots or the man’s detailed movements and body position when he was hit.”

The trial centred on whether the police fired two fatal shots in Torell’s back after he turned away from them, thereby ceasing to be a threat. A fourth officer, who emptied her weapon’s magazine during the hail of bullets, was not charged because she was considered to have acted while Torell still represented a threat.

The case has raised questions about the readiness of police to resort to firearms as they battle escalating gang violence in Swedish cities. Police shot six people dead last year, an increase on previous years.

“We have learned to be offensive. Forward, forward, until the perpetrator can no longer hurt others,” an officer told a Swedish newspaper after the tragedy. “If that means he needs to be shot to death then so be it.”

Early in the morning of 2 August 2018, Torell took a toy gun from his room and went outside to play. His condition meant he moved slowly and clumsily, according to his mother. He behaved like a three-year-old and could speak only one word: mum.

Bystanders alerted police that an armed man was on the street. Officers feared that it might be a local suspect known to them who had violently attacked his partner and threatened to kill her, so they assumed they were hunting a potential killer.

Unknown to them, however, this man had been arrested months before and was awaiting trial. The information was not in the police database.

As they approached the scene, the police met Torrell’s father, who was out looking for his son. They spoke, but neither realised that Torell was the cause of alarm.

Torell’s mother, Katarina Söderberg, said she accepted the court’s verdict but said the police must change how they respond to emergency situations.

“I hope that we learn the lessons and look ahead to see what must change in order to safeguard all our children and young people with developmental and intellectual disabilities who are out in the community among us,” Söderberg told Swedish media.

It had been widely expected that the officers would walk free from the court. It is extremely rare for Swedish police to be sentenced for using their weapons during active service.

Karl Johan Thulin and Hans Christian Appelgren had been charged with misconduct, and Hannes Erik Bäckström was charged with negligence causing another’s death.

The ammunition used by Swedish police expands on contact, causing severe injuries, in order to stop the target quickly and prevent the bullets from exiting the person’s body and possibly injuring someone else. Photographs from the scene showed trees deeply gouged by bullets that missed their target.

One member of the jury disagreed with the verdict, believing the two policemen who fired the lethal shots should be found guilty.

Anton Strand, a lawyer for one of the freed police officers, said the court’s decision “does not make the tragedy any less. Nobody wanted this to go so wrong.”

The prosecutor Martin Tidén said he reserved the right to appeal against the verdict.