BLAGOVESHCHENSK, January 28. /TASS/. Governor of Russia’s Amur region Oleg Kozhemyako urged to refrain from immediate conclusions and decisions in the case of mass murder at the local branch of the Central Bank on Tuesday. He offered condolences to families and friends of the victims.
A deputy head of Russia’s Central Bank’s main department in the Amur region on Tuesday shot dead three employees and committed suicide over "problems at work," sources close to the investigation have said. Russia’s Central Bank later confirmed the incident, which occurred in building of the Central Bank’s main department in the city of Blagoveshchensk. The victims were two women and one man. One of the women worked as the bank’s department deputy head and the other one was the department chief, while the man headed the bank’s one of departments.
"The first question arising is - how a man with a gun could get inside a well-secured building? Security regulations of many organisations requiring top-level security must be outdated," the governor tweeted on Wednesday.
A source in the Investigative Committee said the gunman had "a nervous breakdown" amid "problems at work" before the attack.
Russian media reports said the incident came amid planned jobs cuts at the Central Bank’s department.
The governor said "managers of any level and any organisations should be most balanced and accurate in making decisions regarding the staff, especially concerning firings not because of somebody’s fault but due to the current situation."
The gunman reportedly used a Saiga rifle. The first deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank, Georgy Luntovsky, told TASS that the Bank of Russia regards this incident in Blagoveshchensk as an "awful tragedy."
A criminal case into the murder of two and more people was opened on Tuesday.