true crime

These are the faces of the heroes in the Stanford University rape case.

They’re the mystery Swedish grad students that the world has been in awe of, the men that tackled Brock Turner as he tried to flee the scene of his crime, the men that Turner’s victim dubbed her “heroes”. Now we know their names.

Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson.

The pair were key witnesses in the case that has courted headlines and captivated audiences around the world – that of star Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, the 20-year-old who was last week sentenced to just six months in prison for brutally raping an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party.

Now, Arndt and Jonsson have spoken to the media about what happened that January night in 2015.

Cycling past the Kappa Alpha fraternity, the two men noticed Turner laying on top of a partially clothed woman behind a dumpster.

“We saw that she was not moving, while he was moving a lot,” Arndt told Swedish outlet Expressen (translated by BuzzFeed News). “So we stopped and thought, ‘This is very strange’.”

The pair approached Turner, and called out to him.

“When he got up we saw that she still wasn’t moving at all, so we walked up and asked something like, ‘What are you doing?’,”Arndt said.

A few words were exchanged, then Turner fled, forcing Jonsson to chase after the swimmer and tackle him to the ground, where they managed to pin him until police arrived.

The victim, meanwhile, remained motionless.

Video by Mamamia
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The woman, who is yet to meet Arndt or Jonsson, delivered a powerful victim impact statement during Turner’s sentencing hearing last Thursday, in which she expressed her eternal gratitude for the actions of the “Swedes on bicylces”.

“I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story,” she said in court. “That we are looking out for one another.”

You can read her entire statement here: “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me.”

On Friday, Jonsson posted the victim’s statement on his Facebook page and thanked everyone for their “encouragement and support”.

“I do ask all of you to spare a few minutes and read this letter written by the Victim,” he wrote. “To me it is unique in its form and comes as close as you can possibly get to putting words on an experience that words cannot describe.”

Given he faced a maximum penalty of 14 years, Turner’s six-month sentence has been denounced by many as a mere slap on the wrist and sparked calls for the judge in the case, Aaron Persky, to be recalled.

So far, a change.org petition to that affect has garnered over 400,000 supporters.

Turner’s lawyers plan to appeal his conviction.