Empty fire extinguisher on SL bus - acquitted in court

It was just after 8 in the morning on December 1 last year when the man emptied a fire extinguisher on the driver on board an SL bus in Stockholm. Images from surveillance cameras show the man smiling.

The bus driver was covered in powder.

- I didn't see anything when I was driving, I only saw black, said the driver in questioning and explained that he braked in order not to cause an accident.

This caused a woman to lose her balance. She fell and hit herself so badly that she got a concussion.

The man with the fire extinguisher was charged last spring with several different crimes, including violence against an official due to the attack on the bus driver and causing bodily harm connected to the injured woman.

The man himself stated that during the journey he realized that the driver was going to drive the bus over the railing on the Skanstulls bridge and kill everyone on board. To save the passengers, he sprayed powder on the driver to stop the bus.

Now he is acquitted by the Stockholm district court with reference to the fact that at the time he suffered from a serious mental disorder in the form of a presumed drug-induced psychosis, which the news agency Siren was the first to report.

In its judgment, the court writes that the man's opinion that the driver would drive the bus over the railing must be taken seriously in light of his psychotic condition, even though this did not correspond to reality. According to the district court, the man acted in so-called putative emergency defence.