MOSCOW, May 25. /TASS/. A kidnapper, who took hostages in an eastside Moscow neighborhood on Thursday, had earlier filed four applications to the police, including over police inaction, a law enforcement source told TASS on Friday.
"He filed three claims with the police over a murder threat, property theft and also lamented about enduring 'a living hell'. In another appeal, he complained about police inaction," the source stated. He also said that the hostage taker demanded that a helicopter and a bus be provided.
The source said that prior to the kidnapping, the man himself had called the police and said he was ready to release them after getting "certain responses from the police".
On Thursday, a 48-year-old man took a family of three hostage in an apartment in a Moscow eastside district. According to a source from emergency services, he was intoxicated. The Moscow department of the Interior Ministry said the conflict could have been triggered by a domestic conflict.
According to a law-enforcement source, a property dispute might have sparked the feud. Early reports say his son who was at loggerheads with the father, had sold half of the apartment to strangers, who took action to evict the father from the apartment. The man turned to the police but no reaction follwed.
On his page in Odnoklassniki social network service he wrote that he had fell victim to ‘malicious realtors’ and wanted to speak to police officers. They had allegedly failed to protect him, so he decided to grab some hostages. In an operation to detain him, the man wounded himself with a knife and is now in an intensive care ward in grave condition. A male hostage was killed in the standoff, while the other hostages - a woman and a child - were not injured.