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Students Who Found Stanford Rape Victim Speak Out For First Time

by Kate Ryan

In January of last year, two Swedish PhD students from Stanford University, Peter Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, came upon Brock Turner sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. After exchanging a few words, they tackled Turner, who tried to flee from the scene of the crime.

Jonsson and Arndt's quick thinking made it possible for police to apprehend Turner, and the victim called them "heroes" in the 12-page open letter to her attacker.

Recently, Arndt spoke out for the first time about the gruesome case to Swedish news outlet Expressen. According to Buzzfeed, which translated the article from Swedish to English, Arndt said,

We saw that she was not moving, while he was moving a lot. So we stopped and thought, 'This is very strange.' When he got up we saw that she still wasn't moving at all, so we walked up and asked something like, 'What are you doing?'

That's when Turner decided to take off running. Luckily, the two students were able to quickly catch up and tackle him before returning to help the unconscious woman. In the interview, Arndt said,

She lay perfectly still.

Jonsson wrote in a Facebook post that he will not publicly speak about the trial or its outcome, but instead shared a link to the victim's powerful letter. He added a note in support of her, saying,

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.

Citations: 'Heroes' Who Rescued Stanford Assault Victim Speak Out for the First Time (NY Mag)