The man who beat a father-of-two police officer to death after he intervened to break up a fight at a World Cup fan zone has been jailed for just one year.
Christian Zedig had gone to watch the match between Norway and Ivory Coast on a giant screen on 30 June.
During the screening in Copenhagen, Denmark, a fight broke out, prompting the off-duty 32-year-old to intervene.
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In the ensuing chaos, he was struck in the throat.
When police arrived, they found Christian with life-threatening injuries as the blow had caused an artery to rupture.
He died in a Copenhagen hospital on 3 July.
Danish police launched a manhunt for the suspect and urged him to hand himself in.
Nkumba Ludovic Tshiembe surrendered to police on the morning of 3 July, was remanded in custody and initially denied wrongdoing.
However, at his assault trial yesterday (7 October), he admitted he was guilty, as reported by Need To Know.
He first admitted throwing beer cans at other people before the fatal assault.
According to him, he was annoyed with others in the area, but it was not because Christian had thrown beer.
When asked about the blow, Tshiembe, who has a background in boxing, said: “I don’t know why I hit him.”
At the end of the trial, the 31-year-old, who is reportedly of Congolese origin and has Danish citizenship, was sentenced to just one year in prison.
He was also ordered to pay DKK 1.9m (£215,000) in damages to Christian’s wife and two young daughters.
Special prosecutor Søren Harbo argued in his closing statement: “A punch is not usually dangerous.”
Tshiembe was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2017 for attempted murder after stabbing a man in the heart at a nightclub.
Before that, he had been convicted of raping a high school girl and several other violent offences.
He has previously been described in court documents as “without empathy”.
Christian, from Eksjö, Sweden, was on holiday in Denmark at the time of the attack.
His wife, Emelie, said they had known each other for 17 years.
They first met at secondary school and started dating nine years ago.
Danish and Swedish politicians from across the political spectrum have criticised the sentence.
Emelie said of Christian: “He was our security. Everything we had imagined for the future… We were supposed to be two people raising our two girls together.”
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