Bullets from two automatic weapons were fired through the window of the apartment in Vällingby on the night of August 28th last year. Ndella Jack,18 years old, was hit 19 times and died almost immediately.
The trial of two men, aged 23 and 30, opened on Monday.
They are charged with her murder, as well as the attempted murder of a 33-year-old man. The man and Jack had recently married abroad, and according to the prosecutor he was the intended target. But he was in the bathroom at the time of the shooting and survived unharmed.
The suspects were the former friends of the 33-year-old. Twelve days earlier they had attended his and Jack's wedding in Gambia, where a conflict arose between the men, the prosecutor told Stockholm district court.
Almost two weeks after the shooting, the 33-year-old man survived another attempt on his life. He was in a taxi with two other people in Nacka near Stockholm when several people opened fire on the car.
The taxi driver was the only one of the people in the car who got hit, and a young music student was also hit in the head and lost his left eye after a stray bullet was fired into his nearby apartment. They both survived.
A third man is charged with attempted murder over the taxi shooting.
A fourth man is charged with aggravated weapon offences for allegedly trying to hide an automatic rifle and a gun after the shooting in Nacka.
“The same weapon was used in both of these incidents,” said prosecutor Maria Hävermark.
The four men all deny the allegations.
“The prosecutor has had a hard time working out a motive because the boyfriend, who is considered to be the real target, has so many conflicts in the criminal world,” Swedish news agency TT quoted defence lawyer Sargon De Basso, who represents the 30-year-old, as saying.
The shooting came just days after a woman in her 30s – also believed to have been an innocent bystander – was shot and killed in Malmö, and sparked a huge debate about gun and gang violence in Sweden.
Female shooting victims are relatively rare in Sweden. In 2018, only one woman was killed with a gun. Out of 111 cases of deadly violence in 2019, 25 of the victims were women according to the National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå). That was the highest level since 2011 when Sweden started keeping statistics on the sex of the victim.
The trial continues.
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