YEREVAN, August 23. /TASS/. Russian serviceman Valery Permyakov who killed a family of seven in Armenia’s second largest city Gyumri in January last year was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.

The verdict was announced by the court of the first instance in northwestern Armenia’s Shirak province. The court proceedings, which were held in a special room on the territory of the Russian military base in Gyumri, took around eight months.

On January 12, 2015 Valery Permyakov, a private serving at the Russian military base in Armenia, fled his post carrying arms and cartridges. Later on, he broke into a private house in Gyumri and shot dead a family of six, including a two-year child, and wounded a six-month baby, who died in a hospital a few days later.

Permyakov left his uniform and footwear with badges and his submachine gun and munitions and fled the scene. He was arrested on the same day by Russian border guards while trying to cross Armenia’s border to Turkey and confessed to the crime.

Lawyer Artur Sakunts, who advocated the interests of the victims’ legal successors, insisted that no full investigation of the criminal case has been carried out. "No explanations were given how one could have killed seven members of a family, including children, without any particular reasons," he said.

This is the second verdict for Permyakov. In mid-August last year, a Russian military court in Armenia sentenced him to 10 years in a high-security prison.

The court proceedings in the Armenian court began on December 18, 2015. This was done as part of an agreement between Russia and Armenia on the issues of jurisdiction and legal assistance on the cases linked to the presence of the Russian military base on the republic’s territory.