On Tuesday afternoon, the District Court in Sosnowiec has decided to arrest for three months 41-year-old Tomasz M., who admitted that last Saturday he had kidnapped, drove to Sosnowiec and then killed 11-year-old Sebastian from Katowice. A video, which shows the inmates’ reaction to the man arriving in custody, has been published online.
The 41-year-old heard two charges on Monday, including murder with special circumstances. He pleaded guilty. For more than five hours he was giving extensive explanations to the prosecution attorney. The prosecution will not reveal their content. The hearing was continued on Tuesday, for several more hours. Later, a request for custody was sent to the court.
An autopsy of the murdered child was conducted at the Department of Forensic Medicine on Monday. According to the preliminary opinion that was sent to investigators, the child was strangled.
The suspect faces a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison, 25 years in prison or life imprisonment.
A Facebook user recorded the moment Tomasz M. was taken into custody. The reaction of the inmates is chilling.
Sebastian went out to a playground in Dąbrówka Mała in Katowice on Saturday. He was supposed to come back home at 7 p.m., but he sent his mother a text message asking for permission to prolong the game by half an hour. Mom agreed, but Sebastian did not come home and did not make contact with his family again.
A search involving police officers and firefighters had been underway since Saturday evening when the boy’s mother reported him missing. Uniformed officers combed the vicinity of the missing person’s location and neighbouring districts. The potential perpetrator was identified on Sunday, based on the analysis of surveillance camera footage, which recorded a Ford near the playground.
A few dozen minutes after the vehicle’s registration numbers were traced, police officers reached its owner. He turned out to be a 41-year-old resident of Sosnowiec. The man was taken into custody and, speaking to investigators, admitted to kidnapping and then murdering the 11-year-old. Soon police found the child’s body – it was hidden at a construction site in the Sosnowiec district of Niwka – a few kilometres from Dąbrówka Mała, where the boy lived. The perpetrator drove him to neighbouring Sosnowiec by car. The place where the dead body was hidden was pointed out by M. shortly after his arrest.
Sebastian was likely held in several different locations after being kidnapped. In one of them he was murdered and then taken to a construction site where, according to media reports, the perpetrator intended to pour concrete over the child’s body. The prosecution does not address these details.