Charges filed after psychiatric patient's heroin death

Manslaughter charges have been filed against a 34-year-old man from Borås who helped a woman commit suicide by giving her an overdose of heroin.

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The man and the woman had got to know each other in the hospital’s psychiatric ward. Both were there voluntarily and the woman was free to move about the facility.

The 34-year-old had been discharged shortly before the incident.

Then one afternoon in August, both were discovered in a hospital bathroom. The woman was dead and the 34-year-old was suffering from severe fatigue.

According to the indictment, the man helped the woman obtain heroin. She had driven to Gothenburg and picked up the drug on the same day she died.

“She intended to take her life. He assisted, which makes him an accomplice to an intentional death,” said prosecutor Urban Svenkvist to the Borås Tidning newspaper.

The prosecutor refers to the conviction of debater Berit Hedeby, who advocated for assisted suicide and in 1977 helped a gravely ill man take his own life, resulting in a one-year prison sentence.

The 34-year-old claims the death was an accident.

The hospital has reported the incident to health authorities in according with Sweden’s Lex Maria medical laws.

Staff had questioned whether it was appropriate for the woman to have contact with the 34-year-old, but the ward had no other places left in which to put her.