In March 2025, a newly 18-year-old leaves his parents' home – a villa in the Norwegian oil city of Stavanger – together with a friend.
At a rhododendron bush in the garden, he turns and waves to his mother. It's the last time she sees him for a long time.
The parents only receive a short text message in which the 18-year-old writes that he is "with a friend".
A few days later, three police officers call at the family's house. The parents believe they will receive a death sentence. Instead, an unlikely story unfolds.
A film clip shows how the 18-year-old is arrested at a hotel in Huddersfield in northern England.
Armed police stand ready in the corridor, equipped with helmets and shields. A young man comes out of a hotel room, wearing only his underwear. He mimes the motion of firing a weapon at the officers. Seconds later he is pushed up against the wall.
In the room, the police find two weapons under the bed, ammunition and a large quantity of banknotes.
It turns out that the son has been recruited as a contract killer by the Swedish criminal gang Foxtrot.
In a report in the daily newspaper Verdens Gang, the family tries to understand what happened.
Growing up, the son is described as a football-interested boy who played the tuba in a marching band and liked to bake muffins.
- He is the world's finest person, with an incredible concern for others, says the mother to VG.
But in 2020, something happens. During the pandemic, the son begins to isolate himself and develops mental illness, his mother says. He quits football, drops out of high school and is placed for a period in a youth home.
- It was our worst decision ever, says the mother to VG.
There he meets, according to VG, the teenager who will later recruit him to Foxtrot.
Eventually he develops a drug addiction. Six weeks after being discharged from a care unit in child and youth psychiatry, he is offered, according to Norwegian media, the equivalent of 280,000 Swedish kronor to carry out a contract murder.
Two days later he flies to Manchester.
Via messages, he received instructions on where to retrieve weapons and money hidden in a wooded area. In the hotel room in Huddersfield, the 18-year-old takes a selfie with banknotes scattered over the bed. He writes in a text message to his girlfriend that he is going on "a crazy mission".
But the Norwegian and British police are on the trail of the murder plans. Both the teenager who was behind the recruitment and the 18-year-old were arrested, just hours before the murder was to be carried out according to the police.
The target of the planned assassination remains unknown. The 18-year-old never had time to kill anyone. The judge addressed the 19-year-old directly when the sentence was handed down, the BBC reports.
- You agreed to murder another person, a person you did not know, in a foreign country. You knew nothing about that person's life or circumstances. You were only 18 years old when you made yourself available to kill for pay.
On Friday, the now 19-year-old man was sentenced in a south-east London court to 20 years in prison for taking part in the murder conspiracy.
The 19-year-old will have to serve at least 13 years before he can be considered for release. His Norwegian lawyers are now working to have him transferred to Norway to serve his sentence.
The family in Stavanger believes that the criminal gang took advantage of their son's vulnerability, with mental illness and addiction.
- He was previously unpunished, did not belong to a gang and had no such intentions. He was exploited in a vulnerable situation, the mother has previously told VG.
The 17-year-old who recruited him has also been sentenced to 14 years in prison in Norway. A 16-year-old is awaiting trial for his involvement in the murder plans.
The case is one of several where young people have been recruited into serious violent crimes linked to Foxtrot, even outside Sweden's borders.
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