MOSCOW, November 8 (Itar-Tass) — Russia has got its own “Breivik”. The young man, reportedly suffering from unshared love and hatred towards the human race, gunned down seven of his colleagues. Forensic psychiatrists are now to decide his future. Meanwhile, the authorities are going to tighten the rules of selling and carrying firearms.
Last Wednesday’s tragedy in Moscow, in which 30-year-old lawyer shot seven people at a close range, has caused a stormy reaction. Lawyer Dmitry Vinogradov came to the office of his pharmaceutical company Rigla and opened fire on his colleagues. Precisely 18 seconds passed from the moment Vinogradov entered a room at the department of finance armed with two shotguns and started shooting at anyone who came his way. Five were killed instantly and two survivors were rushed to hospital, where one of them later died of wounds. Vinogradov, armed with two smooth-barrel hunting guns, fired shots at point-blank range to be sure each one be lethal.
The killer has already been dubbed ‘Moscow’s Breivik,’ by analogy with the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who got the maximum 21-year prison term for killing 77 people.
Vinogradov is faced with life imprisonment. However, police doubt the man is sane and they plan to order a psychiatric examination. Specialists say that only someone with a grave mental disorder could think of staging the massacre. “There are certain types of latent schizophrenia that do not manifest themselves in everyday life,” the daily Novyie Izvestia quote social psychiatrist Natalya Varskaya as saying. “Such a person may be a successful employee, but a strong stress can trigger the mental disorder any time.”
The killer’s mother, Yelena Vinogradova, has confirmed in an interview to the Moscow evening daily that his son had quarreled with a girl, Anna, whom he had been dating for four months and with whom he parted last January. As follows from what Dmitry’s mother said, her son went to buy the guns shortly afterwards.
Yelena Vinogradova said the quarrel with the girl had sent her son into a deep depression.
“He had been psychologically unstable before. The head injury he had suffered when he was still a small kid made itself felt. He repeatedly suffered from aches in the head and neck. Suddenly it all turned from bad to worse. Quite by chance I learned that he was a member of a suicide’ club,” the woman said.
Anna Kazannikova, 26, the young woman the killer had been obsessed with, told investigators that their flirting lasted for several months. The young people started meeting last summer. Dmitry was giving her small gifts and taking her to the movies once in a while. The young people parted last winter, when Vinogradov went jealous and aggressive.
When questioned, the killer confirmed the love affair was the underlying cause of the massacre. He got angry with the whole world and started planning revenge. “In March I bought a shotgun and 200 cartridges, as well as some special gear,” Vinogradov said. “My colleagues were to blame for the breakup with Anna. They were telling her she should stop meeting with me.”
Just as Breivik, the Russian killer formulated a sort of ideology to explain his crime. Vinogradov declared his heinous plans in the social network Vkontakte. There he published a document entitled Manifesto, in which he said that he hated humanity and did not want to be its member.
“Everything that I has seen and learned during my life has taught me to hate humans as a species,” Vinogradov wrote. “I hate humanity and I hate being part of it! I hate the senselessness of human life. I hate life itself. I see only one way of finding an excuse for it – doing away with as many particles of the human compost as possible.”
On Wednesday that post collected more than 1,500 votes in its support.
Both shotguns used as criminal weapons had been formally registered in the name of Dmitry Vinogradov.
In the meantime, amendments tightening the rules of carrying arms may be adopted in the near future, much earlier than originally expected, while the trail of the tragic incident in Moscow is still hot, says the daily Izvestia with reference to the chief of the license service of Russia’s Interior Ministry, Leonid Vedenov. According to the periodical, draft amendments to the law on firearms will be presented to the Interior Ministry in the near future.
Vedenov said the amendments had taken several months to formulate.
“We propose a ban on the carrying of weapons, in the first place, traumatic weapons, in the state of alcoholic intoxication,” he said. The Interior Ministry proposes the introduction of administrative or criminal punishment for this abuse.
Also, the Interior Ministry is going to prohibit civilians from carrying any kinds of weapons in public places, such as parks, restaurants, shopping centers, cinema theaters, offices and bazaars. Besides, the age qualification for carrying arms is to be raised from 18 years to 21.
Alongside this, according to the rules proposed for introduction, all those applying for permission to carry firearms will have to undergo medical examination at state-run outpatient clinics instead of private ones. The police hope that in this way it will be possible to ease the flow of faked medical certificates that small clinics offer for a token fee. According to the daily, the certificates from the narcological and psycho-neurological dispensaries had been issued to the killer lawyer at a private clinic.