A man is sentenced to prison for serious assault and animal cruelty in Stockholm

The 35-year-old man has not been at work for several days when the boss decides to make a home visit. The manager also suspects that the employee's partner, a woman in her 30s, "is not feeling well". When he arrives at the apartment in southern Stockholm shortly before lunchtime on August 26 this year, he notices that the woman is locked in the toilet - and his employee admits that he has killed the couple's cat, according to the preliminary investigation.

The police are called to the scene and find that the woman has several visible injuries. Her face has a "good bruise" and several more bruises bruises on her body. The man is arrested and taken to the Västberga police station for questioning. At the same time, the woman is taken to the emergency room for a check-up.

Soon a picture of what has happened emerges. The woman says that she had received a text message from another woman who claimed that her partner - the 35-year-old suspect - had cheated on her. When she had confronted the man two days earlier, on August 24, "it broke for him".

- Then he grabbed me in bed and bit my finger. Then he held me down, hit me, strangled me, says the woman in questioning.

The man allegedly claimed that the woman had a "psychosis" and that she made up the infidelity. According to the woman, the man strangled her several times and hit her several times with a clenched fist before he stopped and left the apartment.

Later in the afternoon, the man came back - and the assault resumed with renewed force, she tells in questioning.

- I couldn't breathe. I grabbed his face and tried to get him to stop, she says.

The woman was not sure she would survive the attack.

- I was afraid for my life, she says further in the interrogation.

The text message that the woman received also stated that her partner admitted that he had killed the abused woman's cat. The incident must have taken place at the end of April and the woman had had suspicions about the cat's death.

In the police investigation, several people confirm that the man has admitted that he had killed the cat by injecting it with the narcotic anesthetic ketamine and then strangling it to death.

- He looked very proud, he wasn't remorseful at all, says a person in questioning.

The preliminary investigation gives the picture that the man has ongoing drug abuse and that he has repeatedly felt very bad mentally.

The Södertörn district court now sentences the man to serious assault on two occasions. He is also convicted of unlawful threats and drug offences. The judgment states that during a transport he admitted parts of the acts against the woman: "I strangled her twice so that she almost died", the judgment states.

The court rules that the man cannot be convicted of having strangled the cat to death. Instead, the cat may have already died from the ketamine, according to the court, which ultimately ends up convicting the man of animal cruelty of the normal degree.

The man has, according to the verdict, admitted that he has abused the woman. He has also admitted unlawful threats and drug offences. He also admits that he has killed the cat but believes that this has been done for reasons of mercy with reference to the cat's old age.

The penalty for the man will be 2 years and 4 months in prison.