MYSEN (Dagbladet): The 34-year-old accused of murder avoided meeting the eyes of the bereaved when he had to look at pictures from the reconstruction of the murder of the family father Christian Halvorsen. The screen the pictures were shown in court, hung right over the heads of cohabitant Nemi Riksen and mother Frøydis Halvorsen.
The 34-year-old had just given his free explanation after answering in part yes, to the question of guilt from the judge whether he killed Christian Halvorsen on July 12, 2020.
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The man is charged with murder.
– Then the answer to the question of guilt is no, the judge said.
– He admits to being negligent and having caused someone else’s death, says Ole Petter Drevland, who defends the 34-year-old who is sitting on the bench.
On the other side of the room, next to public prosecutor Jeanette Westlund Hegna and development assistance lawyer Sol Elden, Nemi Riksen tried to do as she promised when Dagbladet interviewed her two days before the trial.
– Are you going to die too, Mom?
To put the island right in the man accused of killing her cohabitant and the father of their 11-year-old daughter.
Avsaget rifle
A policewoman and a detainee took care of security when the 34-year-old was brought into the courtroom. On the audience sat family and friends of Christian Halvorsen, who turned 43 years old.
The accused 34-year-old explained what he believes are the events that led to the murder of Christian Halvorsen.
Eight days before the murder of the father of the family, the accused was asked by a friend to retrieve a weapon, a sawn-off rifle. The comrade did not want to have the rifle in his home and asked the accused to keep it. The man accused of murder chose to store the rifle in a shed on the plot where he lived.
FAMILY FATHER: Christian Halvorsen turned 43 years old. Photo: Private.
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According to the man’s explanation, the weapon was left in the shed until the date that was to be Christian Halvorsen’s death, 12 July.
He claims that he wanted to store it somewhere else and explained that he cut off the flask of the rifle to make room for the weapons in the backpack, before riding an electric scooter to a friend. This friend is the 50-year-old who was arrested early in the case and charged with complicity in murder. The charge against this man was dropped.
Wanted to hide the weapon
He traveled to his friend and together they went on to meet Gøran Tapio, who lives near the scene where Christian Halvorsen was shot and killed. Gøran Tapio has previously asked for an interview about the case in Dagbladet.
The 34-year-old still had the rifle in his backpack and explained that he wanted to find a place to store it before he came home to Tapio.
TAKEN: Pictures from a surveillance video show the police action and the subsequent arrest of a 34-year-old who is charged with the murder of Christian Halvorsen in Askim. He was arrested six days after the murder. In November last year, he admitted in interrogation that he had shot the father of the family. Photo: Øistein Norum Monsen / Dagbladet
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Christian Halvorsen lived on the road to Gøran Tapio and the accused explained in court that he wanted to ask if he could hide it there. In court, the 34-year-old explained that he did not want to take the weapon to Gøran Tapio, because there was often a police raid there.
– I knocked on the door. He came around because he’s at the back of the house. He asks me to come around. I’m joining the porch. I ask if I can put something away while I am with Gøran. I take off my backpack and take out my weapon. I try to make sure it is not charged. We walk around the house and I ask if I can throw it in the hedge. When I make a throwing motion towards the stern, it goes by itself, the accused explained.
The explanation provoked reactions in courtroom 4 in Mysen.
– Did you get the impression that he died, asks public prosecutor Hegna
– Yes, that was the way he fell, says the 34-year-old.
– Did you call the emergency services?
– In the.
Removed evidence
The accused explained that he panicked and that he did not remember anything until he was by a pond and threw the rifle and cartridges into the water. According to the man, he was then picked up by a 50-year-old, who was previously charged in the case, before he goes home.
Several surveillance cameras had been set up around the 34-year-old’s home. Before he fled on to Drøbak with his cohabitant, the recordings from the surveillance cameras around the dates were deleted. The clothes he was wearing when Halvorsen was killed were burned in a fire pan in the garden.
– If you wanted to remove evidence, the public prosecutor asks.
– Yes, the accused answers.
MISS: Frøydis Halvorsen, who is the mother of Christian Halvorsen, and cohabitant Nemi Riksen did their best to comfort each other when the trial started in Follo and Nordre Østfold District Court in Mysen on Thursday. Photo: Øistein Norum Monsen / Dagbladet.
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The 34-year-old explained that he belongs to a drug-laden, criminal environment in Askim, but that he should not have used drugs that day. He admitted to taking a shot of alcohol that night.
Defense lawyer Ole Petter Drevland asked his client if he understood the mind that the survivors had expressed.
– Yes, I feel they have every reason to. I do not think that is strange and I think this is just my fault. All the choices I made that day up to the event are what I made. They are the ones left with a big loss, the accused says.
– I should have done anything to make it different.
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