Browse column

COP FIGHT!

We begin in the small Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod, where on February 6, roughly 10 Ukrainian cops from the elite "Berkut" division (the Ukrainian OMON) were enjoying a banquet party at a local restaurant. It should have been just another night of drunken police revelry ending with the discharging of a couple of AK-47s clips, a trip to the local brothel, and a bad mass hangover, except for the decision by a group of GAI traffic cops to crash the party.

When group of GAI officers from two neighboring towns decided to stop in for a bite to eat, it didn't take long for trouble to fire up. Local news sources did not report the exact reason for the altercation. We're guessing it was a combination of turf lines crossed and caliber envy. If the Ukrainian GAI is anything like their Russian counterparts (and we're guessing they are), then after all those bottles of vodka, they must have started to feel that their comic sailor uniforms and underpowered makarov pistols attached to their belts by sissy cords seemed inadequate compared to the Berkut cops' OMON-style gear and tricked-out AK-47s.

A toast-off ensued, with each group trying to best one another. When that didn't settle the score, a brief verbal exchange about "rank" and "seniority" followed. But that went nowhere fast. So, these defenders of the peace decided to resolve the dispute the good ol' fashioned way. According to Segodya, armed with knives, chains, pipes and baseball bats, they headed outside for full-on group fight.

Backup was called and soon about 100 of Ukraine's finest were going at it the restaurant's parking lot. It not clear how long the fight lasted, but these guys must have been really ham handed from all the drinking because, amazingly, no one was killed and no innocent bystanders were injured during the tussle. Only one of the police officers sustained injuries serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. All the other cops tended their battle scars at home.

The Ukrainian government is denying that the incident ever occurred.

ALL LAWYERS MUST DIE

On the evening of February 14, St. Petersburg lawyer Josef Gabuniya was making his customary drive home from work in his newly purchased innomarka when he realized he had a flat tire. He stopped on Bogatyrsky Prospekt, a deserted street in the city's northern spalny rayon, and tried to fix the flat. As he was bending down to inspect the damage, he didn't see a man emerge from a tailing car and approach him quietly from behind with a knife in hand.

The next thing Gabuniya knew, the assailant plunged the blade into his scalp and attempted to stab him in his neck. But the lawyer wasn't going to take the attack lying, or sitting, down. The attacker managed to get in a few more slashes, including one deep cut that barely missed the carotid artery, before Gabuniya grabbed his knife by the blade, wrenched it from his hand and switched into attack mode. Spooked, the attacker ran back to his car.

Gabuniya managed to get himself to a hospital before he bled to death all over his brand new car and is currently in critical but stable condition. His would-be killer left no leads, but police are ruling out a botched robbery and leaning towards connecting the crime to Mr. Gabuniya's professional activities. He is currently handling the defense of 60 felonies in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Maybe one of his former clients wasn't too happy with his work.

DISAPPEARING KIDS

Early in February, when kids started disappearing from various villages in Leningrad oblast, St. Petersburg authorities realized that they might have a serial killer on their hands. The first two kids, boys aged seven and eight, disappeared February 1 from Tosno, a railroad town located in the southeast corner of the oblast. After returning home from school, the two buddies went out to into their dvor to play. They were never seen again. There were no witnesses.

Ten-year-old Natasha Rubtsova from the neighboring town of Pikalyovo was the next victim. She disappeared on February 9 after going out alone to ride her sled at a hill behind her apartment. Just like the first two victims, there were no witnesses. That same day, at around the same time, nine-year-old Pavel Kabanov was seen leaving school in central St. Petersburg, but never made it home. Again, there were no witnesses.

Although the police were mum, the Death Porn Profiling team immediately suspected that the first two disappearances are linked to one perpetrator, judging by the temporal proximity and similarity of the victims. Pavel Kabanov, on the other hand, was clearly an unrelated. The first perp could not have been in two places at once.

Indeed, our prediction turned out to be correct. Pavel returned home the following day. As it turned out, he was scared of getting a beating after receiving a D on his homework. He had spent the day wandering around town and sleeping in podezds before getting hungry and returning home. (We're guessing that beating was still waiting for him when he got there.)

Natasha's body was found a few days later not far from the abduction site. According to police repots, she was naked and showed signs of rape. The cause of death had not yet been determined.

While at print time, the bodies of the two boys had not yet turned up, local police have changed their version of events. According to RBK Daily, the prosecutor for the Leningrad oblast has ruled out the previous serial rapist/murderer scenario and is now leaning towards a version of events that has the two children accidentally drowning in the local river. While there is no evidence to support this, he has passed on the case to the local emergency rescue service. Now it's up to them to fish out the bodies. No crime, no case, no problem.

PAY UP FOR DIE

On the evening of February 8 in the Kemerovo oblast, a man visited his friend's house to collect on some money owed to him. When he rang the doorbell, the friend came to the door but refused to open it. The kids and wife were sleeping, he said. Through the closed door, the debtor explained that he didn't have the 26,000 rubles on him and promised to get the money together soon. Judging by the fact that the creditor didn't come alone (he brought along a locked and loaded shotgun), this probably wasn't the first time his friend tried to weasel out of the situation by not showing his face. After asking for the cash a few more times, the friend gave up hope of ever seeing his money. He continued chatting up his soon-to-be-dead buddy, all the while taking careful aim through a big old-fashioned keyhole. Then he squeezed off a mess of buckshot through the door. IOU, indeed.

THAT PODEZD SMELL

On February 15, police in the basement of a Novosibirsk apartment discovered five male bodies. The officers arrived on the scene after a series of complaints by apartment residents that a foul stench had been coming from some nook underneath the building. All the bodies were male and showed signs of multiple puncture and slicing wounds. As this info comes from the terse Interfax wire, details are scarce. But judging by the decomposition, the victims had been dead for about a week. Police believe the murders are part of an organized crime razborka.

BOTCHED HONOR KILLING

That same day, two Moscow street beggars posing as Afghan vets were convicted of the attempted murder of a man who criticized their fake army fatigues a year ago. According the victim, who was well enough to testify at the trial, he was attacked by the two men while leaving the Kuntsevo metro stop. The victim, who was left unnamed in the Interfax report, says he is a simple god-fearing man who made the mistake of trying to shame two drunkards out of scamming people out of their hard-earned kopeks. After a brief verbal altercation, the two men pounced on him with knives in broad daylight. The slashed his gut and lower back. The vets were clearly pumped up on a mind-bending mix of fortified beer and window cleaner. Even when the victim collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood, one of the perps continued to kick and stab him in the head and face. One of the attackers (we're guessing the one that kept slashing) was sentenced to three years squared. His friend received a suspended sentence and his victim's 86,674-ruble hospital bill. He was also ordered to pay 1,000,000 rubles for moral damages.

Print   Share article