A British man is on trial for allegedly killing a 75-year-old man with an axe, claiming he acted in self-defense after being restrained and raped by the pensioner.
Garo Jlitakryan, 32, admitted striking the unnamed man with an axe at least six times. Jlitakryan faces a minimum of 10 years in prison if found guilty, following the attack which happened last July while he was in Finland on a charity bike ride for UK organisation Help for Heroes.
While he was in the Scandinavian country, he found work doing gardening at the man’s flat. He told the court they had first met at a spa in the city and went to his home the next day. But he claims things turned nasty when he asked to borrow a phone charger.
“He told me that if I helped him, he could give me sexual favours, but I didn’t want sexual favours. I just wanted to rest and charge my phone,” he told the court in South Ostrobothnia, north west Finland.
“We ate lunch together, which tasted terrible, then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was tied with bandages, I couldn’t move properly. He then committed sexual acts on me and I couldn’t escape. The ordeal was horrible. When it was over, he rolled next to me. Then he started snoring and I decided to escape. I went to the kitchen and cut my ties there.”
Jlitakryan told the court the man then prevented him from leaving and threatened him with an axe, saying “no one would believe” him. He added: “The man had an axe in his hand, I had no choice but to defend myself. It was either him or me. He slipped and fell and I went to hit him with the wooden handle of the axe but I also slipped and the axe hit the man.
“I remember hitting him twice, maybe three times. The man didn’t move and so my idea was to leave. My bike was in the man’s car. I packed my things, took the axe and my devices that were charging, panicked and then fled in the car, driving east.”
Jlitakryan was arrested by police on August 17 almost 300 miles away after the car was found abandoned Jlitakryan was arrested by police on August 17 almost 300 miles away after the car was found abandoned ( Image: Court Documents Finland) …..
The pensioner’s daughter told the court how she raised the alarm after not hearing from her father. Police eventually found the man on August 14, nearly two weeks after he had been hacked to death. Three days later on August 17, Jlitakryan was arrested by police while working at a husky farm almost 300 miles away after his car was found abandoned in a ditch, according to MailOnline.
Jlitakryan was on a charity bike challenge in Finland for UK charity Help for Heroes Jlitakryan was on a charity bike challenge in Finland for UK charity Help for Heroes The court heard how In his last Instagram he posted a drunken monologue about “the language barrier is a piss take” and that if you “don’t learn a language you are going to feel an outsider”.
Swigging from a glass he added: “I dunno I may just leave this place, it’s a f***ing stressful thing. You can’t even get a relationship because you can’t speak the language.”
The trial continues.
