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Girl stabbed to death at Norway refugee centre

A 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death at a refugee reception centre in Western Norway on Thursday night, in one of the worst examples of refugee violence yet seen in the country.

Published: 20 November 2015 13:55 CET

Girl stabbed to death at Norway refugee centre

Police at the refugee centre where a 17-year-old-girl was killed on Thursday. Photo: Ingrid Ellevset/NTB scanpix

An 18-year-old man, also Eritrean, has been arrested and charged with “causing severe bodily injury leading to death”, police lawyer Knut Meek Corneliussen told the local Adresseavisen newspaper on Friday morning.

”The detained man has been living at the centre for about a year, while the victim hasn’t been here that long,” Jarl Aspen, from the local police, said on Thursday night.

“The situation was unclear so we dispatched several police officers to the scene. We now have control and the suspect has been detained. As far as we know, no one else was involved.”

According to a police statement, the woman was found severely wounded shortly before 8.30pm last night.

When the police arrived shortly afterwards, the 18-year-old tried to escape by jumping out of a window, but hurt his foot when he landed, after which he was arrested without struggle.

Ambulances arrived at 8.55pm, but medics were unable to save the girl, who was confirmed dead an hour later.

“This is a tragic event, both for the residents at the reception and for those who work there,” said Ståle Refstie, mayor of Sunndal, the town where the centre is located. “We must work to find out how that could happen.”

Police have yet to disclose the relationship, if any, between the two.

An Eritrean asylum seeker in August stabbed a mother and her son to death at a branch of IKEA in the Swedish city of Västerås, selecting them seemingly at random.

A failed asylum seeker from South Sudan in 2013 stabbed and killed two men and a woman on a bus near Årdal, where he had been staying in an asylum centre.l

Norwegian police charge Olympic champion's father for domestic violence

Jakob Ingebrigtsen and two of his brothers, Henrik and Filip, who are also athletes, shocked Norway last October when they accused their father of being violent.

“We grew up with a very aggressive and authoritarian father, who used physical violence and threats as part of his upbringing,” the brothers wrote in an op-ed for newspaper VG. “We still feel a sense of discomfort and fear that we have felt since childhood,” they added.

Police opened a probe into the abuse claims and on Monday said prosecutors had decided to charge Gjert Ingebrigtsen, 58, with domestic violence against one of his children.

According to a source close to the case, the acts in question do not concern the trio of known athletes but another, younger child.

Over a period of four years, from 2018 to 2022, Gjert Ingebrigtsen allegedly manhandled, insulted, threatened and hit the child in the face with his hand or with a towel.

Responding to questions from AFP, Therese Braut Vage, who led the investigation, would not confirm this account.

Police said they had closed investigations into other events concerning the six other children in the home either due to a lack of evidence or, in one case, because the statute of limitations having expired.

Gjert, who coached Jakob until after the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo — where Jakob won the gold — has always denied the accusations against him.

“As far as the dismissed cases, we agree that there is no evidence to prove that Ingebrigtsen committed any wrongdoing,” his lawyer John Christian Elden told AFP on Monday.

“For the rest, Ingebrigtsen disputes the description of the facts on which the indictment is based — and he therefore does not admit his guilt,” he continued in an email.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen is the most successful of the three brothers, twice winning gold in the world championships 5000m in 2022 and 2023, as well as the Olympic 1500m gold.

The 23-year-old is also preparing for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.

Henrik, 33, and Filip, 31, were European champions in the 1500m in 2012 and 2016 respectively.

After breaking with his sons, Gjert Ingebrigtsen shocked Norwegian athletics by becoming the trainer of another runner, Narve Gilje Nordas.

The Norwegian Olympic Committee has said that Gjert will not be granted accreditation for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, as was the case at last year’s World Athletics Championships.

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