In the powerful letter read aloud by convicted rapist Brock Turner's victim during his sentencing Friday, the woman called the two Stanford University PhD students who tackled Turner and promptly called police "heroes." In the midst of growing controversy surrounding local authorities' baffling hesitance to release Turner's actual mugshot, these Swedish heroes—Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson—have started revealing their own account of Turner's attack.
"We saw that she was not moving, while he was moving a lot," Arndt told Swedish publication Expressen, according toBuzzFeed. "So we stopped and thought, 'This is very strange.'" When they approached Turner, who was behind a dumpster with the victim, the two students noticed she "wasn't moving at all" and asked what was going on. Turner then tried to run, though Jonsson managed to tackle and subdue him with Arndt's help.
The two kept the then 19-year-old Turner subdued until police arrived, at which point they both recounted what they saw to police. Though they haven't formally met Turner's victim, both students testified in the trial. Jonsson, who BuzzFeedsays is declining press engagements, shared the victim's letter on social media Tuesday and thanked both family and total strangers for the support. "To me [the letter] is unique in its form," Jonsson said, "and comes as close as you can possibly get to putting words on an experience that words cannot describe."
Judge Aaron Pesky ultimately handed down a six-month sentence to Turner, claiming that additional time for the crime would have a "severe impact" on his life. At time of publication, more than 300,000 people have signed a petition demanding Pesky's resignation.
