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Policeman in Rahachow district goes on trial over murder of young woman

A police officer accused of fatally wounding a 22-year-old woman this past July said that he did not know how the bullet was fired from his gun.

On November 24, a judge of the Homyel Regional Court began a hearing on the case against the officer of the Rahachow district police department, charged with murder committed from “hooligan motives" under Part Two of the Criminal Code’s Article 139.

The shooting incident occurred in the village of Dowsk in the Rahachow district on July 6. The officer fired his pistol while in a police car, wounding the woman.

The defendant said that he had no desire to kill the woman.

He admitted that he and other officers in the car were drunk.

“The victim said that my gun was not real,” he said. “To prove that she is wrong, I wanted to give her the gun. When I was in the act of doing it, the girl bowed her head toward the gun and the gun suddenly went off.”

The public prosecutor said that by pressing the gun against the forehead of the victim, the defendant “violated flagrantly the public order, showed profound disrespect for society and demonstrated his disregard for generally established rules of behavior to display his superiority, humiliate and suppress another person, demonstrate Dutch courage and disposition to rowdiness.”

The victim – a resident of the nearby village of Zhuravichy - died from a non-penetrating head wound in intensive care 10 days after the shooting, never regaining consciousness.

Her parents are seeking 150 million rubels ($50,000) as compensation for the funeral expenses, expenses related to legal services and moral damage.

The 30-year-old defendant, who joined the police in 1996, and his three colleagues who were in the car were sacked following the incident.

According to the investigators, the officer had 1.8 per mille of alcohol in his blood at the time of the incident. One more policeman in the car had two per miller of alcohol. The third policeman fled; his whereabouts were established two days later.

Local residents celebrated Kupalle, Belarus’ folk midsummer holiday, in the village of Zhuravichy on the night between July 6 and 7. Officers of the Rahachow district were on duty there to prevent public order offenses.
he victim, an accountant at the Novyya Zhuravichy farm, and two other young women sitting into the police officers’ car to go to Dowsk.

One of the women said that the officer pressed his pistol against her friend’s head and discharged it, with the bullet entering the forehead. //BelaPAN