The Koskela teen murder was a homicide that happened in Koskela, Helsinki, Finland on 4 December 2020. The victim was a 16-year-old whose name has yet to be released by Finnish law enforcement due to privacy regulations. The police charged three boys, all aged 16, with the murder. They were incarcerated in the Helsinki District Court on 10 December. The perpetrators and the victim knew each other beforehand. According to the police, the motive for the act was to punish the victim for some earlier activity.
The prosecutors requested a sentence of nine years in prison without parole for the accused. The district court gave an intermediary sentence on 24 March 2021, sentencing the accused to psychiatric assessment.
The final verdict was given on September 3, 2021 in the Helsinki District Court, where the three defendants received prison sentences of 10 years one month, 9 years 2 months, and 8 years 2 months respectively.
Background
The victim of the homicide was a 16-year-old boy, who was described as loyal, nice, gifted and personal, but also as very lonely and quiet. He had met two of the accused already in kindergarten and went to school together with them in Käpylä. He met the third member of the accused in high school. One of the victim's schoolmates described the victim and one of the accused as being best friends during primary school. The victim had, however, suffered extensive bullying since primary school, at the hands of both the accused as well as students. The bullying had begun as name-calling and insulting, but later progressed to physical violence. In his last years the victim had suffered from severe depression and his circle of friends had shrunk.
The victim's parents long sought for help for their son, and in autumn 2020 the victim was placed in a state care in Helsinki per his parents' request.
Before the homicide, the accused had robbed the victim in August 2020. The robbery had involved violence and the victim was robbed of property and money. The incident was reported to the police in September. The accused had repeatedly assaulted the victim since summer. According to the police, the killers viewed the victim as submissive and treated him like a "rag doll" they could abuse. The theme of the assault and homicide was a "punishment game" connected to the bullying.
Course of the events
The victim and the perpetrators had been at the birthday party of one of the perpetrators near the Koskela Hospital on Friday 4 December. The perpetrators had planned in advance to force the victim to drink alcohol. At first the four spent the evening quietly. At some point the three boys began to assault the partially defenseless fourth boy. The victim begun to cry, asked the perpetrators to stop and tried to stop the blows with his arms, but did not participate in violence himself.
The victim was assaulted in various locations close to the hospital. According to the police, the violence lasted three to four hours and was humiliating to the victim: the perpetrators forced the victim to drink an entire bottle of Vergi vodka, hit him on various parts of his body very violently with their fists and a metal pipe and spit and urinated on him. The victim had become severely inebriated from the alcohol. One of the boys strangled the victim, tried to break his arm and jumped on him from on top of a crate.
A woman who had been walking at the Koskela Hospital area at eight o'clock in the evening had seen two of the accused and the victim, who was clearly in a bad way. One of the perpetrators was absent at the time and returned later to continue to participate in the violence. They were also seen at 8pm by a younger woman who was walking in a park near the hospital. She also saw three boys, one of whom was lying down. The woman had shouted to ask what was happening, to which the boys had replied that there was no problem and asked the woman to leave. The woman could not judge the situation herself as it was too dark. She telephoned her elder sister to come and judge the situation. The women deemed the situation to be threatening and did not intervene. The boys moved to the other side of the hospital and dragged the boy, who had been lying down, holding him by the shoulders.