The two Swedish students who caught Brock Turner as he was sexually assaulting a woman at Stanford University gave their account of what they saw that night.
It all happened on Jan. 17, 2015, when Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson were on their bikes at the Stanford University campus when they saw something was not right.
Both students saw from a distance a man and a woman lying on the ground behind a dumpster, according to Sweden’s Expressen.
As they approached Turner and the victim, they realized something was wrong.
“We saw that she did not move at all, while he was moving very much. So we stopped because it seemed so strange,” Arndt said in Swedish to Expressen.
The two men then immediately confronted Brock, a swimmer on the school’s team.
“Peter approaches the man and asks what he’s doing and I follow suit,” explained Arndt. “When that man gets up, we see that she is still not moving, so we asks something like ‘what the hell are you doing?’”
Turner then tried to run away.
“I checked if the girl was alive, for she lay perfectly still, while Peter immediately ran after the guy, and manages to catch him maybe after 30 meters. Then we held him down until the police arrived,” said Arndt.
Turner was arrested and the victim was taken to a nearby hospital.
Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky, following the recommendation of the county’s probation department, sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years probation on June 2.
Persky cited Turner’s clean criminal record and the impact the conviction will have on his life. The former swimmer must register for life as a sex offender after a jury convicted him of three felony counts of assault and attempted rape.
The sentence received backlash from people on social media.
In court last week, the victim read a 12-page-letter, in which she addressed the defendant directly, describing how the incident left her emotionally battered.
“Unconscious, with my hair disheveled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, … butt naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart,” she wrote about how she saw herself in pictures of her behind a dumpster.
She also said that when the policeman arrived and interviewed one of the Swedish students “he was crying so hard he couldn’t speak because of what he'd seen.”
In her letter, she thanked the two men who helped her that night.
“Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another. To have known all of these people, to have felt their protection and love, is something I will never forget,” she wrote.
In a post on his Facebook page, Jonsson shared the victim’s letter saying, “I do ask all of you to spare a few minutes and read this letter written by the Victim. 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.”
Arndt is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, as well as a teaching assistant. He previously worked at J.P. Morgan as a summer associate, according to his LinkedIn page. Jonsson recently earned a master’s in management science and engineering at Stanford.
