Story By: Feza Uzay, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
A Turkish man has been jailed for eight years for driving and trying to sexually assault a 17-year-old girl shortly before she fell partially clothed to her death from a ninth-floor apartment window.
Ebru Erdem fell from the ninth floor of the 14-storey apartment building in the district of Kucukcekmece in the Turkish province of Istanbul on 20th March 2019.
Serdar Tas, 22, asked a friend for the keys to the flat and invited the victim, who he met several days before, to join him for the evening.
According to the news site Haberler, Ebru fell to her death later that evening after being given a cocktail of drugs. She was wearing her jeans and a bra.
Tas quickly left the flat, hailed a cab, and fled the scene.
After being detained by the police, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA were detected in Tas’ blood.
In his statement, Tas said that they were smoking cannabis at that the flat and that the teenager jumped from the window herself.
Tas reportedly deleted all his correspondence with Ebru before handing his phone over to the police.
He was later charged with deliberate murder, sexual assault, possession, and drug trafficking with prosecutors asking for a jail term of 23.5 years.
During the trial at the Bakirkoy 20th High Criminal Court, the victim’s friend Murat Buyuk said: “Ebru sent me a message at 11.30pm on the night of the incident, telling me that she was feeling bad. ‘Come and get me out of here’, she said. I told her that I’d come and get her. I was waiting for her to send me the location. I couldn’t reach her after that, her phone was off. Then I heard that she was dead.”
According to prosecutors, Ebru came to the flat without informing her family and Tas gave her various different drugs during the evening.
He then tried to have sex with the victim, but she refused so he started to sexually assault her and she fell from the window during the struggle.
The court acquitted Tas of ‘deliberately killing’ the victim because intent could not be proven, and he was sentenced to eight years for sexually abusing a minor as the age of consent in Turkey is 18.
It is unclear if prosecutors plan to appeal the ruling.
