The Svea Court of Appeal is increasing the prison sentence for a 17-year-old boy who shot and killed a young man in Västerås last summer.
The victim, who was 18 years old, was shot to death in a residential area in the Bjurhovda district on July 9 last year. He had no connections to the criminal underworld and both the prosecutor and the court believe that the wrong person was shot.
The shooter was only 16 years old when the murder was committed. In the district court, he was sentenced to four years in prison. The Svea Court of Appeal is now sentencing him to six years in prison instead.
It is very unusual for people under 18 to be sentenced to prison, but like the district court, the Court of Appeal believes that there were "particularly aggravating circumstances" and that an adult would have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Furthermore, two people who were acquitted in the district court for aiding and abetting the murder are now being sentenced to 12 and 12.5 years in prison, respectively. They are also being convicted of protecting the perpetrator.
Another boy who was 16 years old at the time of the shooting was sentenced in the district court to four years of closed youth care for incitement to murder. He did not appeal the verdict to the Court of Appeal.
The two teenagers met, according to the district court, at a HVB-home on the west coast where they took on the assignment to shoot a person in Västerås for 150,000 kronor.
