PSKOV, August 6 (Itar-Tass) - The authorities in the Pskov region do not have official information about the delay in the work of an ambulance on the day, when priest Pavel Adelheim was killed, Deputy Governor Maxim Zhavoronkov said on Tuesday in comments on the reports made public in some media that the doctors arrived at the murder scene only after the second call.
“The Russian Investigative Committee is probing the criminal case over the murder of priest Pavel Adelheim. The authorities in the Pskov region are keeping in constant contact with the detectives from the Pskov regional investigation department. If the official information comes to them about a possible shortcoming in the work of an ambulance, we will compulsorily make an inquiry into it. We do not have this information from the Pskov regional investigation department,” the vice-governor said.
On Monday, August 5, priest Pavel Adelheim was stabbed to death at his house. The priest was found dead with knife wounds at about 20:00 Moscow time in Krasnogorsky Bystreet at the Church of Sts. Constantine and Helen. During the search operation the police have detained a Muscovite born in 1986, who is suspected of committing this murder. The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case for murder. The criminal case over murder of priest Pavel Adelheim was passed in the investigation department dealing with particularly important cases in the regional investigation department.
“The preliminary cause for the death of the priest is a massive blood loss as a result of injured heart,” the investigation department said. A young man “lived for three days at the house of Father Pavel at the request of a certain woman from Moscow,” deputy of the Pskov regional assembly Lev Shlosberg wrote in his blog. “During the conversation at the kitchen the guest grabbed the knife and stabbed Father Pavel in the belly, after that he inflicted two knife wounds on himself,” he said. The suspect was hospitalized, after the surgery he was connected to the heart-and-lung machine.
Governor of the Pskov region Andrei Turchak named the murder as “a horrible crime”. “This is a challenge to the society, the encroachment on the foundations of morality, moral values and faith,” Turchak believes. He also offered condolences to relatives, near and dear and the flock of priest Pavel Adelheim.
Pavel Adelheim, who turned 75 years on August 1, became a priest in the Soviet times. From 1976 he serves as a clergyman in the Pskov hierarchy.