A 35-year-old man died on April 23 of stab wounds in front of a medical clinic.
A
witness said the private clinic refused help until it was too late.
The
witness, journalist Liza Tatarinova, reported that she came across a wounded
man lying on the pavement at Saksahanskoho Street in central Kyiv at about 3
p.m. He was bleeding and breathing heavily.
Tatarinova
and two other witnesses called an ambulance and the police, and then the private clinic
Healthy &Happy Ukraine, located across the street. According to Tatarinova, one of
the witnesses – a manager of a local pub – rushed to the clinic looking for a doctor, but
came back alone, saying that the clinic refused to help.
“That’s
a private clinic, they require scheduling appointments in advance, and all
doctors are busy now,” Tatarinova quoted the manager as saying.
When
police came, an officer went to the clinic once more and came back with a refusal.
A doctor came only after Tatarinova told clinic receptionists she would call
journalists.
A
doctor tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but the man died. The Kyiv city
police website reported the murder, confirming that the man died from stab wounds to the chest, incurred during a fight with two other men.
While some reports claimed the man had also been shot and a revolver was found near his body, this was not confirmed by municipal police.
“We
don’t comment on this situation,” a receptionist at Healthy & Happy
Ukraine clinic told the Kyiv Post.
The
Healthy & Happy Ukraine clinic belongs to Natalia Tigipko, former wife of
Sergiy Tigipko, a multimillionaire member of parliament. In an interview with
Sofiiskiy Fitness Center magazine in 2008, she said that her clinic’s staff “is
obsessed with the idea to perform in the best way.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected]
