You're reading: Shooting at Ukrainian-Romanian border in Zakarpattya qualified as premeditated murder attempt

The prosecutor's office of the Zakarpattya region of Ukraine is exercising procedural supervision over a criminal investigation into the wounding of several people with firearms at a petrol station in the village of Solotvyne on the evening of August 30.

Four residents of Mukacheve and the Mukacheve and Svaliava districts were taken on August 30 to the Tiachiv central district hospital with gunshot wounds, one of them in critical condition, the Zakarpattya prosecutor’s office reported.

Investigators seized 25 cartridge cases, an ax, and a baton from the scene as material evidence of the crime.

The law enforcement agencies have launched a Siren operation to hunt down the shooters. Mobile patrol outposts have been deployed in several districts of the Zakarpattya region, and primary search and investigative procedures have been started to determine all circumstances of the incident and identify those responsible for it.

A report on the incident has been filed with the general register of pretrial inquiries under Ukrainian Criminal Code Article 15 Part 2 and Article 115 Part 2 (premeditated murder attempt). The pretrial inquiry is under the regional prosecutor’s personal control.

It was reported earlier with reference to Zakarpattya regional administration head Hennadiy Moskal that four people had been shot and seriously wounded in a conflict between two groups of men arguing over contraband cigarettes at a border between Ukraine’s Zakarpattya region and Romania.

Moskal said on his personal website that two groups of men first had a heated verbal exchange, which gradually grew into a fistfight. Finally, one of the locals took a foreign-made submachine-gun from his car and started randomly shooting at his opponents, firing a total of over 20 bullets, Moskal said.

As a result, four men aged from 22 to 36, sustained gunshot wounds of varying degrees, he said.