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84-year-old killed for ‘not lending grandson her car’

Murder charges have been filed against a 22-year-old Swede suspected of killing his 84-year-old grandmother after she refused to let him borrow her car.

Published: 9 January 2012 16:22 CET

The man, a resident of Borås in western Sweden, is suspected of having stabbed and beaten his grandmother in October of last year before suffocating her to death by rolling her head up in a rug, the local Borås Tidningen (BT) reported.

After allegedly killing his grandmother, the man then took her mobile phone and drove off in her car only to later run off the road.

He then called his mother, who came to pick him up.

The 22-year-old then explained that something terrible had happened to his grandmother.

The man’s mother called the police, who subsequently found the 84-year-old with stab wounds and head trauma. She also had her head tightly wrapped up inside a rug.

The 22-year-old was arrested later that evening and remanded in custody several days later.

Investigators found traces of the 22-year-old’s DNA on the shaft of a knife believed to be used in the deadly attack, as well as blood from the 84-year-old grandmother on the man’s clothes.

While the grandson has admitted he was present at his grandmother’s home, he has yet to provide a full account of what took place, despite several interrogations.

The man was said to have a good relationship with his grandmother, but prosecutors believe the 84-year-old’s refusal to lend her car to her grandson, who was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time, may have led the 22-year-old to kill her.

“One can only speculate as to why he was so determined to borrow the grandmother’s car. An educated guess could be that drugs may have had something to do with it,” prosecutor Daniel Edsbagge told BT.

In filing the murder charges on Monday, Edsbagge said he believed he had “solid evidence” implicating the 22-year-old in his grandmother’s death.

According to BT, the man had been charged with a number of other crimes earlier in the year, including attempted assault, petty theft, and a number of drug offences.

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'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast.

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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