Dubbed the “Child Assassin” by Swedish media, the unnamed minor was reportedly paid 250,000 Swedish crowns ($27,000) to travel to the city of Malmö and kill a certain person, but ended up shooting a 21-year-old man who was hanging out with some friends. It is unclear who ordered the killing and why, but authorities have reasons to believe that this wasn’t the 12-year-old’s first hit job.
Swedish newspaper Expressen reported that the young suspect was apprehended on Tuesday, December 16, following eyewitness reports of the shooting. The minor had run away from his grandmother’s house in another city, where he had lived since he was 7 years old, and is believed to have become involved with violent gangs.
Police believe that the target of the assassination was another passenger in the same car. All the passengershad criminal records, including the victim, who had served a prison sentence of just over two years for robbery, threats against an official, and other charges.
Swedish twelve-year-olds have been suspected of carrying out explosions, planting hand grenades and doing errands for criminal groups in the past, but this is the first time in the country’s history that someone so young is suspected of a deadly shooting.
“We see that it is creeping down in age. We have had some very young perpetrators, especially in acts with hand grenades… Then you think about how it could have become like this, and how we can stop this development,” Rasem Chebil, the officer responsible for the investigation at Malmö Police, told reporters.
Chebil added that most minor criminals are recruited by career criminals through social media, and are then used to carry out serious crimes because in Sweden, children under the age of 15 cannot be jailed. However, in this particular case, due to the severity of the crime, prosecutors decided to initiate criminal proceedings against the minor.
