By Valentyn Ogirenko
KYIV, April 18 (Reuters) – Six people were killed when a Russian-born man opened fire on passersby in a Kyiv district on Saturday before barricading himself in a supermarket with hostages, where he was shot dead by police, authorities said.
Ukraine’s Security Service said the shooting was being investigated as a terrorist act, but offered no motive.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said the shooting happened in the leafy Holosiivskyi district, injuring 14 people.
“He took hostages and unfortunately, one of them was killed,” Zelenskiy said. “Four people died simply on the street. One woman died in hospital after being seriously wounded.”
One of the wounded was a 12-year-old boy whose parents were also killed, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said.
Reuters video footage showed emergency crews loading bodies into vehicles.
Shootings of this nature are extremely rare in Ukraine, whose cities face regular Russian airstrikes.
“I was shocked when I saw photographs of the people who had been killed,” Lesia Rybzha, 45, said.
“I still can’t understand why, on top of (Russians) killing us with airstrikes, people are being killed on the streets as well.”
SUSPECT KEPT TO HIMSELF
A woman who identified herself as Hanna said the suspect was a neighbour who steered clear of other residents.
“He didn’t want to communicate with anyone,” she said. “When I sat outside on the street – he knew me by my face – he would greet me briefly and hurry off to run his errands. He wasn’t close with his neighbours or anyone else.”
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said police stormed the supermarket after unsuccessfully trying to negotiate with the suspect for 40 minutes.
He said the man, who owned a registered weapon and secured a medical certificate to use it, moved down the street and fired at people without warning before entering the supermarket.
“He was simply shooting people at close range. He approached and shot them,” Klymenko said. “So people had very little chance of survival.”
Kravchenko said the shooter had been identified as a native of Moscow, born in 1958, and was brandishing an automatic weapon.
He posted a photo showing a blurred prone figure covered in blood inside a store, with a weapon lying nearby.
Zelenskiy said the suspect had a criminal record and had set fire to the apartment where he was registered before going into the street with the gun.
The president said he had lived for some time in the eastern Donetsk region, one of the focal points of the four-year war with Russia.
“Everything that can be known about him and why he did this is being clarified. Every detail needs to be checked,” Zelenskiy said. “The investigators have several versions. All his electronic devices, phone, all contacts will be checked.”
(Reporting by Valentyn Ogirenko and Anatolii Stepanov in Kyiv, Ron Popeski, Editing by Louise Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama, Rod Nickel)
Comments