Man sentenced to life for killing teenage girl after rejection

ISTANBUL

A Turkish man has been sentenced to life in jail after he murdered his ex-girlfriend who rejected his offer to reunite.

Mustafa Yetgin, 21, attacked 17-year-old Helin Palandöken with a shotgun as she left her high school in Istanbul’s Pendik district on Oct. 13, 2017.

Palandöken died at the scene and two of her schoolmates were wounded in the attack. The perpetrator was detained in a nearby school as he attempted to commit suicide.

An Istanbul court convicted Yetgin on July 5, giving him an aggravated life sentence for “deliberately killing a child by planning it.”

The fatal attack had triggered public outrage in Turkey, leading to calls for stricter measures to prevent violence targeting women, as well as proposals to make it harder to purchase guns.

Yetgin had bought the shotgun online, a gun vendor said in his police testimony.

“Helin broke up with this guy, with whom she was in a relationship for a year, before school opened. He was constantly harassing her. Helin was an intern at the Tuzla Municipality. He was sending her flowers and threatening her. He would wait for her to leave work. Helin told us she was scared,” said a friend of the slain girl, who wanted to remain anonymous.