Swedish police have released a sketch of a man suspected to have been one of two predators who attacked and raped a woman as she walked alone in a town near Gothenburg.
The attack took place in the municipality of Rävlanda at around 7:30 p.m. on February 20th and saw the victim approached and attacked while she was walking down the road.
Stefan Gustavsson, press spokesman in the police region Väst, commented on the incident, saying: “There are two perpetrators who initiate and complete a rape against the woman, but they are interrupted by a witness passing by,” Aftonbladet reports.
The two men are believed to have been interrupted by a witness walking their dog and are said to have fled the scene in a nearby parked car.
In a rare move, police have called on the public for help with the case and released a sketch of one of the suspects, a young black man.
“At this point, we are looking for the perpetrators, but also the witness with the dog who passed and who interrupted the act, because that person has not been identified,” press spokesman Gustavsson said.
Swedish police rarely release sketches or identifying information of criminal suspects in ongoing cases, and according to a 2016 report, some have been specifically instructed not to describe the race and nationality of potential suspects over fears they might sound racist.
While the background of the suspect in the case remains unknown, a study by Lund University published in February revealed that the majority of convicted rapists in Sweden come from migration backgrounds and nearly half were born abroad.
Of the offenders in the study born outside of Sweden, 34.5 per cent came from the Middle East and North Africa regions, while 19.1 per cent came from countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2018, a review of gang rape cases by the Swedish newspaper Expressen revealed that 32 of the 43 men sentenced for gang rape they had identified came from migration backgrounds.
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