The killer was only 14 and had lived in youth homes as a ward of the authorities since he was eight.
A year ago, a gang helped the boy escape, put him up in a hotel and gave him cannabis, food and new clothes. Six days later, gang members told him it was time to repay them for their kindness. They had a job for him.
Together with another youth, the boy, who as a juvenile cannot be identified, shot dead a 33-year-old Hells Angels biker. He was convicted by a court which described the case as a gangland contract killing.
As he was too young to be sentenced, he was handed back to social services and sent to another youth home.
Sweden has long prided itself on one of the world’s most generous social safety nets, with a state that looks after vulnerable people at all stages of life.
But these days it also has another distinction: by far the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU. Last year 55 people were shot dead in 363 separate shootings in a country of just 10 million people. By comparison, there were just six fatal shootings in the three other Nordic countries - Norway, Finland and Denmark - combined.
Kids need love, acceptance and guidance from adults who are capable of that. If they don’t get that from those who should be giving it, they are open to abuse from those who will use and abuse them.
Those kids aren’t being recruited to murder anyone in the beginning. They’re being given the things they need, then they’re being manipulated to believe they owe their lives to the ones who gave it, and must do what they’re told to repay the debt.
Kids don’t have adult brains to think through the consequences of their choices. And the adults in charge of them, specifically politicians and other idjits who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about them most of the time, are failing those kids at every turn.