- SOS 112, what's the emergency? - We need an ambulance.
There's blood everywhere.
- Where is he bleeding from? - Where is he bleeding exactly?
- His throat is bleeding! - His throat.
Someone has been stabbed. Come here quickly! Hurry!
- What was the address? - What's the name of the road?
- Föskeforsvägen 6. - I can't hear properly.
Give the address calmly and slowly, and I'll send an ambulance.
- Föskeforsvägen. - No, I can't hear.
You have to come now! His throat is bleeding!
- You said he was stabbed? - Yes, he's been stabbed. Quick!
- Is the perpetrator at the scene? - Yes!
On 19 July 2018, in the middle of a summer night in Värmland-
the emergency center received several desperate and alarming calls.
Harout, a young man, had been stabbed and needed emergency care.
Shortly after 12 am-
we received a call about a fight in Hagfors involving several people.
This was no ordinary drunken brawl that had got a little out of hand-
- where they fought with their fists.
There was a knife involved and that means it's serious.
Then you start thinking about what you might find at the scene.
Are the perpetrators still there? Is there more than one perpetrator?
Are they still fighting?
We got informed that the ambulance is on its way.
They didn't want to arrive until we were at the scene.
We went as fast as we could.
Thomas and his colleague hurried to the scene.
They're miles away when ambulance paramedic Ulrika was almost there.
Lots of adrenaline rushes through the body.
We didn't know what we might encounter.
It was agitated and chaotic, lots of people were screaming.
We would be the first at the scene as the police were still far away.
We planned to sneak up and take a look.
The alarm came from an area called Gärdet in central Hagfors.
Peter lives nearby. He knew some of the people involved.
When he saw someone getting injured, he rushed over.
I have witnessed a similar situation, with a larger stab wound.
I was convinced that I could save his life. Completely convinced.
When he collapsed I ran forward.
I don't know Harout other than by name and sight.
He was a regular guy, an ordinary person.
21 years old. That's nothing. His life was just beginning.
I have kids older than him.
- Where is he bleeding from? - Where is he bleeding exactly?
- His throat is bleeding! - His throat.
I think I have to save his life.
I took off my t-shirt and used it to stop the bleeding.
He was afraid, and stressed.
"He's dying!" people shouted. That made him scared, of course.
I tried to calm him down.
I said, "I've called an ambulance, it's on its way."
"You won't die, it'll be fine. You're not going to die."
Then it felt like he was losing consciousness.
He was slipping away. That's how it felt.
With every second the chances of keeping Harout alive decreased.
It was essential for him to receive care immediately.
You have to come now! His throat is bleeding!
- You said he's been stabbed? - Yes, he's been stabbed. Quick!
It was dark outside, we had high beams on when we got here.
We saw people coming running towards us.
They knocked on the windows and pulled the doors for us to help.
They shouted at us to hurry up, and that the perpetrator had gone.
The scene wasn't really secure.
We made the choice to run out.
We hurried to the patient who was lying here.
A friend of the patient shouted that he had to wake up, he can't die.
Ulrika started caring for the man, but felt that he had no pulse.
She cut his clothes open and began CPR.
You're trying to do your job and take care of the patient.
We could hear people screaming:
"We'll send the police after you! You asshole!" Stuff like that.
We heard that the people here were shouting at someone.
To begin with it felt a little uncomfortable.
Because you don't know. You don't feel completely safe.
At the same time you're so focused on your work-
- so you just get on with it.
Finally, external commander Thomas arrived at the scene.
He tried to gain control the situation-
- and figure out what had happened.
The first thing we saw was paramedics working on the victim.
The first thing I did when I arrived here-
was to move all the people who were here-
- right around the paramedics.
We saw glass, crockery. and even cutlery on the ground.
I noticed that the window to one of the apartments was open.
I got the impression that it came from the window.
Right about here a man was sitting and calling me.
He pointed: "Here's the baseball bat Mattias used."
Those were the first words I heard.
I saw a broken baseball bat. It was the thicker part-
the upper end of the baseball bat, that was on the road.
The baseball bat was broken, there was a sharp edge to it.
My feeling at that point was that they fought with baseball bats.
That one had broken and wounded Harout.
Then the dog handler arrived. I showed him the broken baseball bat-
- that was probably the weapon used.
The handler was given the task of trying to find more clues.
He left, and quite quickly, only 20 or 30 yards away-
he found the lower end of the baseball bat.
When the second patrol arrived we cordoned off the crime scene.
We got lots of people to move away, so we took as big a perimeter-
- as we could, at this point.
They were still working on Harout. who was lying on the ground.
We were all amazed at the amount of blood on the scene.
The wound we saw on his throat was a small wound.
A small puncture wound, that's the only damage we saw.
We turned the patient over to see if there were any wounds on his back.
We saw nothing on his back, however we saw a knife under his right hip.
It was in its protective sheath which was buttoned shut.
We were doing CPR the whole time. It feels...
...hard when you don't get any response at all.
We gave the patient medication, we gave him blood.
He was given plasma, and we kept on for 90 minutes before we stopped...
...resuscitation attempts.
It is a situation no one should have to go through.
Seeing a man die in the street in central Hagfors.
It's so unbelievable, you can hardly believe it's true.
The deceased man is 21-year-old Harout.
He lived near the crime scene and came to Sweden 3 years earlier-
- as an asylum seeker from Syria.
Several of his friends said the same thing.
They described him as an incredibly kind and helpful person.
He was alone without any family in Hagfors.
I think his closest relatives were in the Stockholm area somewhere.
When we looked at the information we had, there was no indication-
that this person was a criminal or incriminated in any way.
He wasn't a violent man. Not at all.
At the crime scene the atmosphere was heated.
The police attempted to sort out who was involved in the brawl-
and who might be guilty of murder.
All the time people come forward to tell me-
who did it, and you have to take him and her in.
It seemed pretty clear to us that Mattias did this.
Harout's friends said that he fought with Harout.
Some of Harout's friends were standing and shouting at us:
"We're going to get Mattias. Do it before we do, or we'll kill him!"
We had to find him as quickly as possible.
To find out where to start their search-
Thomas and his colleagues asked everyone where Mattias went.
After Harout collapsed Mattias ran in this direction.
He ran across the grass and around the corner.
After that we couldn't find any more information about where he went.
Hoping to pick up Mattias' trail-
Thomas sent the dog handler in the direction of his escape route.
The dog handler found a track and went over here.
We then knew that the apartment Mattias was using-
was in one of the buildings. a bit further away.
The fact that the trail leads there indicates that he ran home.
Thomas sent the patrol he had available there.
They went to the apartment with the dog handler.
It's not optimal to send a patrol out to individual like that-
but high security was needed for them.
The apartment was locked. We asked the caretaker for the keys.
He came with a key and opened the door.
But it turned out that the apartment was empty. There was no one there.
But we did find some clothes.
Bloody clothes. So we knew that he'd been here.
When the patrol was finishing up they heard someone talking outside-
with the caretaker who brought the keys.
It turned out to be Mattias.
Immediately, the police apprehended Mattias.
There were lots of indications that he was the perpetrator.
They had hopefully captured Harout's killer.
He admitted that he was in the fight.
Then all of a sudden he got blood on him.
He got blood on his face and clothes and he didn't know how.
He didn't do anything, he said.
But he got covered in blood.
He went home and showered.
And changed his clothes.
In search of some comfort, he went to his wife's grave.
I don't see Mattias as a murderer, I really don't.
Mattias didn't even know Harout.
It's frightening, a person with no motive at all.
Mattias is 47 years old and grew up in Hagfors.
He has children and had recently lost his wife.
I've known him since I was 16.
I'm 46 now, so I've known him for 30 years. That's a long time.
I would describe him as a rather kind-hearted person.
But then what happened, happened...
His wife passed away shortly before, it was a difficult situation.
It was very difficult for him.
Peter, who was on the scene early, was asked how the fight started.
Earlier, Peter and his girlfriend were on their way to Mattias' house.
I parked the car on the street Harout lived on.
I sat in the car.
Mattias came around the corner of the row of apartments-
with a baseball bat at the ready. And he yelled something.
I thought he was mad at me, because he ran towards me.
I was like: "What the hell's happening?"
Then there was loud yelling.
He yelled something.
"Let's fucking get Harout." Something like that.
Peter and his girlfriend heard the fight and ran to the scene.
When the fight was over and Mattias disappeared-
- Peter's girlfriend ran after him.
When he had showered at home another person came over-
and said that some people were coming after Mattias.
I ran back to the apartment and said to Mattias:
"You have to get out of here, they're coming for you." I panicked.
He headed up to the cemetery.
He wanted to go to the cemetery and say goodbye to his wife.
"Come with me there, and then you can leave," he said.
I went with him.
We went up to the cemetery and sat by the grave.
He said, "I've screwed up, I'm going to be gone for a while."
Then he rested and slept for a while before going home.
In the end, even Peter's girlfriend admitted-
that Mattias confessed something while they were together.
The information we received was that Mattias left the crime scene-
and met a woman and said that he slashed his throat.
Everything pointed to Mattias.
When the police tried to sort out what happened things didn't add up.
The problem at this stage in the investigation-
is that we had lots of witness statements.
We felt that something was not right.
We knew a knife had been recovered.
The victim had died, as far as we understood, from a stab wound.
Everything pointed to that.
At that time, we had lots of witnesses.
But no one had seen who inflicted the stab wound.
Witnesses identified Mattias as the culprit.
As they didn't interview anyone who saw him actually stab the victim-
the police didn't want to assume he was the sole perpetrator.
We had to find out who was involved in the fight-
- and what could have caused it.
According to witnesses, Mattias was with his 23-year-old neighbor, Sara.
And she was involved somehow.
A colleague interrogated Sara in more detail.
The colleague who interrogated her said that she didn't do anything.
She stood at a distance and saw Mattias and Harout fighting.
She definitely didn't hurt Harout in any way.
This is what emerged at that stage.
I tried to save his life, that's what I did.
Sara became sad and broke down.
I don't know if this was at home or at the scene.
She was so upset back at home they called an ambulance for help.
Sara's mother was suspected of complicity initially.
This is because she was also at the scene.
The mother said she didn't see anything, she just heard fighting.
She went there, and according to her statement-
she performed CPR on Harout while he was on the ground.
She didn't know anything else.
She is absolutely sure that Sara didn't do anything.
And then something else came to light-
Sara was more involved than what we initially thought.
It seemed it could be some kind of jealousy thing.
Through interviews with witnesses the police began to unravel-
- who had been involved in the fight.
In addition to Mattias and Harout, who were the ones who fought most-
it was said that Sara and her mother were at the scene.
But they were not physically involved.
The brawl also reportedly included some of Harout's friends.
Then there was a girl, it was unclear if she's Harout's girlfriend or not.
Danielle says she was in the apartment and saw some things.
From her window.
The apartment that Harout lived in is half a floor up here.
It's the first window next to the door.
It was from that window they stood and shouted at each other.
Sara and Mattias stood on the street, shouting.
In the end it was too much for Harout.
Although Daniella and his friends tried to keep him inside-
he jumped through the window and attacked Mattias.
And they started really fighting.
Daniella grabbed what she could, crockery, cutlery, etc.-
and threw it at them to stop them fighting.
Then she locked herself in the bathroom and called for help.
- SOS 112, what's the emergency? - We need an ambulance.
There's blood everywhere.
- Can you see the person moving? - I can't see anything.
I'm hiding in the bathroom, they're after me too.
- Who stabbed him? - Sara Fransson.
Daniella saw Sara with the knife and Harout bleeding and collapsing.
Mattias was already being interrogated.
Based on the new information, the police decided to bring Sara in.
What's difficult about handling differing information from witnesses-
- is partly the volume.
They may seem credible, but they might not be accurate.
People talk and add things in an effort to understand things.
The information we get in interrogations isn't always accurate.
If people witness a terrible thing they remember it in different ways.
We talked to Daniella a lot.
One moment she said that she saw it.
The next she said that she didn't see it.
She had locked herself in the bathroom because she was terrified-
that Sara and Mattias would come after her.
Sara Fransson is 23. She lived with her mother in an apartment-
that as well as being close to the crime scene-
is also right next door to Mattias' apartment.
Sara spent time in foster care. She came back to Hagfors-
when she started high school. She now lived with her mother.
The move home was not a success.
Sara ended up with the wrong crowd and dropped out of school.
One year before the event Sara and Harout became a couple.
Sara was happy and seemed fine when she met Harout.
She had plans to start a course.
She wasn't doing anything right then. She was unemployed.
Their relationship ended three weeks before the murder.
Harout met Daniella, and how long they were together...
Daniella said they weren't together, they had been dating for a while.
It was probably for the two to three weeks since the breakup.
The police started interrogating the two suspects-
about their involvement in Harout's death.
Sara said that she had been harassed by Harout and Daniella-
since their relationship ended. Which is also what led to the fight.
Sara says she was sitting outside her home with some friends.
Then Harout and his friends came along.
Daniella shouted things to Sara.
She wanted to talk to Harout and Daniella.
She was tired of the arguments.
She couldn't go out without them yelling at her.
She just wanted it to stop.
Mattias also explains that Sara's mother-
said when Sara went out: "You have to help Sara."
Mattias knew that Harout and Sara had been a couple.
He understood that it would be a dirty fight-
I think those were the words he used.
He grabbed the baseball bat and went out.
Mattias admitted that he hit Harout with a baseball bat during the fight.
He denies stabbing him with the knife. So does Sara.
When she saw him collapse she ran over to him.
She yelled to call an ambulance and tried to help him.
She got some blood on her.
That is the reason why her clothes were bloody.
The image she wanted to give was that she tried to save him-
and that she wasn't involved in this.
Despite her denial the police continued to investigate-
to see if Sara could have a motive for murder.
Let's look closer at how she reacted when the relationship ended.
Sara said she broke up with him.
But if we look at what happened in the weeks since it ended-
we can see that she was jealous.
Sara said that she couldn't live without Harout.
Some reports said that Sara was stalking Daniella.
She had been outside her apartment threatening Daniella.
Someone threw rocks at my window several times.
The first time it happened I went out onto the stairs.
It was the middle of the night and she came up to me and said:
"If you don't leave Harout alone I'll kill you."
But were these empty threats, or could Sara resort to violence?
In the interrogation, Daniella said that the same night Harout died-
- there was an earlier incident.
Daniella had been to a convenience store in Hagfors.
Sara saw Daniella there.
When I was leaving I was attacked.
She threw my phone, threw me to the ground and pulled my hair.
Kicked me.
She said: "Forget about Harout. Or I'll kill you."
"He's my boyfriend. It's not over between us."
The question was whether Sara's anger was also directed at Harout?
Before the event, she and a friend had been out in Hagfors-
- and Harout had cycled past.
It was after things had ended between Harout and Sara.
Sara had said: "If only I had a knife!"
She had made some gesture, slammed her fist into her palm.
He laughed at us when we approached.
When he had cycled past, she said:
"If only I had a knife right now."
"I'm only joking." We laughed about it, it was nothing.
Then the result came in from the NFC's forensic investigation-
from the knife they suspected killed Harout-
that Ulrika, the paramedic found under his body.
I don't remember much about the knife.
It was in a protective sheath. A buttoned sheath.
There was blood on it, and black hairs on the case.
The hair was Sara's.
They found hair in Harout's hand, strands that were also Sara's.
When Sara was confronted with the evidence she didn't find it strange.
She suddenly revealed new information.
Sara's explanation was that when Harout came out-
he went after Sara, hit her with part of the knife-
- and pulled her hair.
She was standing at a distance and suddenly the knife came flying over.
She picked it up, put it in its sheath and threw it aside.
She didn't want anyone to get hurt.
Then she saw Harout coming towards her in the street and collapsing.
The police try to get more information about the knife-
- that was found under Harout.
It was Harout's knife, someone had seen him with it before.
The knife was found under Harout, we thought that was strange.
He had moved after he was stabbed.
Sara says she took the knife and threw it over her shoulder-
so it landed on the other side of the street.
There was a question mark about how the knife had got under him.
Was it really the weapon that had been used?
The autopsy report showed that Harout's injury-
could have been inflicted with that knife-
as the depth and width of the wound were consistent with the blade.
To get more clarity on how close those involved were to Harout-
- when he was fatally stabbed-
a blood pattern analysis of their clothing was performed.
The analysis showed that Sara was much closer-
than witnesses and she herself claimed.
Close enough that she could have carried out the stabbing.
But beyond the couple of clues that were found-
in the form of Sara's hair strands and the blood pattern analysis-
no further noteworthy forensic evidence was found.
It can be a little frustrating.
We wanted it to point in one direction, but it didn't.
We were back to the various witness statements-
- and piecing together that puzzle.
Sara and jealousy made a better motive.
But several people said that Mattias did it.
Mattias allegedly met a woman and said he'd slit Harout's throat.
The police continued interrogating, although it seemed futile-
and didn't help the investigation.
Almost six months after Harout was killed-
some of the witnesses began change their statements.
Sara wanted me to say that Mattias stabbed him.
She wanted me to say that.
Yes, of course I will. I'll do that, I said.
But I never would. I only said that at the time.
Peter said in his last interrogation, when new information came to light-
that Sara asked for help to find the knife at the scene.
She told me at the scene that she did it.
On November 192018, charges were brought against Sara and Mattias.
The prosecutor argued that they murdered Harout together.
Since the victim was first attacked with a baseball bat-
- and received a blow to the head.
But he was also stabbed so severely that he died.
The trial began in December in Värmland District Court.
It transpired that more witnesses wanted to change their statements.
It soon became apparent why.
Several witnesses said-
that they were influenced by Sara's mother.
They were contacted through phone calls and text messages.
She tried to control what they said in interrogations-
and what they should say, that Sara hadn't done it.
A witness who had met Mattias on his way home-
when he said: "I slit his throat"-
that witness changed her mind and said it wasn't like that.
The witness said that Sara stabbed Harout.
It can't be helped that witnesses who completely change their story-
lose their credibility and their evidence loses its value.
Journalist Simon Strinnholm followed the trial closely.
As evidence, the prosecution has a strand of hair on the knife.
The hair belonged to Sara.
They had it as some kind of proof that she carried out the stabbing.
It was pretty weak evidence, I think.
No one saw anyone stab anyone.
Who stabbed the knife into Harout's throat?
If I knew I would tell you.
What is your part in what happened on Föskeforsvägen?
I tried to save his life. That's my part.
When it came to Sara and the knife, a lot of people saw her-
with the knife in her hand. But no one saw the actual stabbing.
After a while, it didn't take many seconds-
a knife landed on the slope near me.
I looked up and saw that blood was gushing from Harout's throat.
I panicked and picked up the knife and put it in its sheath.
I backed up a few steps and threw it but I don't know how far.
I panicked and screamed for help.
I shouted to my mother, to call an ambulance.
You have to come now because his throat is bleeding!
He won't die! Where is he bleeding? Where is he bleeding?
Just six months after Harout's death the district court gave its verdict.
Here. January 2, 2019. "Both acquitted of stabbing."
It was somewhat expected.
They were both sentenced to jail by the district court.
For involuntary manslaughter etc., but they got away with murder.
The court's judgment was appealed by both parties.
The prosecution wanted one of them convicted for the murder-
while the defense wanted Sara cleared of any involvement.
It was very much the same evidence as in the district court.
Most importantly, the defense called a retired police officer.
He was supposed to act as some kind of expert witness.
The expert witness the defense calls was Sonny Björk.
He was a cop for 47 years and had worked on several high-profile cases.
These included the Malexander murders and Lasermannen.
I was the forensic manager in the Palme team from 1988-2012.
The defense wanted Sonny Björk to look at the forensic evidence-
- to see if anything seemed odd.
There were things there that didn't add up.
we look at Sara Fransson's clothes and the blood patterns-
you could say the splash patterns-
are mostly low splashes and splashes on the shoes.
This indicates that she was in close proximity to him-
but not so close that she got splashed from the injury itself.
As opposed to the other person-
who got a lot of blood on his top which more or less splattered out.
Her blood pattern is the least likely killer.
Sonny looked closer at the forensic investigation-
- of the suspected murder weapon.
If you look at the autopsy report-
there are oddities regarding the knife versus the injuries.
The width of the puncture wound is too small. It is 28 mm.
The blade is 35 mm.
You can get a wider puncture wound than the width of the blade.
But you can't get a narrower one.
I don't think this is the knife he was stabbed with.
Sonny was not the only one who doubted that the knife found-
- was the knife used to kill Harout.
She asked me to look for the knife, she did.
Some friends of hers helped too.
I said there was a knife next to Harout.
"It's not that one," she said.
It can't have been the knife on the slope, that was Harout's knife.
It wasn't Sara's knife.
Lots of people have looked for that knife.
Someone found it, I'm sure of it.
Based on the forensic evidence it cannot be said-
that she stabbed the victim with this knife.
What he stated was picked apart-
by the prosecution's forensic expert.
The prosecution argued that their blood pattern analysis-
indicated that Sara was next to Harout at the time of the stabbing.
The very opposite of what the defense says.
The prosecution's forensic expert stated-
that the knife wound, the entry hole, can contract afterwards.
That explained why the wound is smaller than the knife.
On May 31, 2019, the verdict fell. The Court of Appeal-
choose to overturn the district court's verdict.
Mattias was sentenced to 1.5 years in jail for aggravated assault.
Sara was convicted, despite her denials, to 12 years in jail-
- for Harout's murder.
I wasn't sure that she would be convicted.
Not for murder. The evidence was the same as in the district court.
But there was a different conclusion. It was stated-
- that the stab wound she inflicted-
was done with such force and in such a place-
that she must have understood that it could lead to death.
I think the sentence is too short.
12 years nothing for a person's life. You're out after 8.
A person was killed because of jealousy.
It's fucked up.
My thoughts on the case are really-
how hard it can be when you have so many witnesses-
- but no one sees the crucial moment.
And how much puzzle-solving police work involves.
Subtitles: Nicola Monchy www.sdimedia.com