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TEENAGER

Teenager found dead in Stockholm shaft

A 13-year-old boy was found dead on Wednesday evening in a 30 metre deep ventilation shaft by Slussen in central Stockholm.

Published: 4 March 2010 07:44 CET

The boy had told his parents that he was heading to Slussen, a key transport junction, but when he had not got in touch and did not answer his mobile phone the police were informed.

“He was later found after a friend showed how it was possible to get into the system of tunnels. When the police patrol came as far as a door where the lock had been busted open they decided to go down into the shaft, where they found the body,” Magnus Berntsen at the police told news agency TT.

“It is strange that a door to a 30 metre deep shaft is not welded shut just closed with a lock that can be easily busted open,” he added.

According to the police it remains unclear why the boy was at the location and whether he had been on his own or with a friend. But there is no suspicion of a crime having been committed, Berntsen said.

Slussen is a central road and metro junction in Stockholm named after the locks that divide Lake Mälaren from the Baltic Sea.

Slussen has long been admired as an example of ingenious traffic and urban planning but as it was built before Sweden shifted to right-hand traffic does not work as it was designed. In recent decades it has become progressively more dilapidated and proposals have been submitted for a major redevelopment.

NORWAY

Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death

A man lay dead in his flat for nine years before being discovered in December, police in Oslo have said.

Published: 9 April 2021 11:20 CEST
Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death
Photo by pichet wong from Pexels

The man, who was in his sixties, had been married more than once and also had children, national broadcaster NRK reports.

His name has been kept anonymous. According to neighbours he liked to keep to himself and when they didn’t see him, they thought he had moved or been taken to assisted living.

“Based on the details we have, it is obviously a person who has chosen to have little contact with others,” Grethe Lien Metild, chief of Oslo Police District, told NRK.

His body was discovered when a caretaker for the building he was living in requested police open the apartment so he could carry out his work.

“We have thought it about a lot, my colleagues and people who have worked with this for many years. This is a special case, and it makes us ask questions about how it could happen,” Metild said.

Police believe the man died in April 2011, based on a carton of milk and a letter that were found in his apartment. An autopsy has shown he died of natural causes.

READ ALSO: Immigrants in Norway more likely to be affected by loneliness

His pension was suspended in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him, but his bills were still paid out of his bank account and suspended pension fund.

Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man’s death would have unlikely gone unnoticed for so long if he had died 30 years ago.

“In a way, it is the price we have paid to get digital services,” he said to NRK.

Last year 27 people were found in Oslo, Asker or Bærum seven days or more after dying. The year before the number was 32 people. Of these, one was dead for almost seven months before being discovered.

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