You're reading: Woman faces charges for allegedly beating neighbor with live geese

A woman in Kharkiv Oblast is charged with assault after allegedly attacking her neighbor using two live geese for a weapon.

The two women, neighbors living in Bokhodukhiv, had a fight in the winter of 2014, according to local police. The women began arguing when one of them saw that another one's geese got into a neighbor’s garden.

One of the angry neighbors picked up two geese
and hit their owner in the face with them. The owner of the geeese fought back,
but with her fists.

The fight resulted in minor injuries for both
women. The geese died.

After that, the geese owner went to police and
reported being beaten with her own birds. The forensic expert wrote that the
victim’s injuries, bruises and abrasions, were caused by “a blunt solid object
with limited surface that could be parts of geese’ bodies.”

The two women reportedly had hostile relations
for a long time.

After a year-long investigation, the case was
passed to court for hearing. Even though the peculiar fight has made the news,
court officials and police have not disclosed the names of the women, in
accordance with Ukrainian legislation.

During the first court hearing on Feb. 16, the
victim told the court that her neighbor approached her with two geese in her
hands.

Deputy chief of the Bohodukhiv police station,
Vyacheslav Reznik, says has that he has never encountered such a ridiculous
incident during his 15-year experience.

Although the fight happened in early 2014, it
took the police an entire year to do the
investigation before the materials were submitted to the Bohodukhiv
District Court of Kharkiv Oblast for trial.

The lady who used the neighbor’s geese as a
weapon was charged with “intentionally causing light injuries.” She faces
public service or a fine, the amount of which will be set by the court.

“Maybe they will make up right in the
courtroom,” the police chief says, but adds that the chances for such happy endings
are small. “Quarrels between neighbors are not rare in Ukrainian villages.
And lost poultry or cattle often becomes a reason for a scandal and even for
criminal investigation.”

The Ukrainian United Register of Court
Decisions has plenty of similar cases.

One of the court sentences says that a
75-year-old resident of Horodne village of Kharkiv Oblast decided to herd his
geese near the windows of his neighbor’s house. When the neighbor asked the man
to take the geese away, the man “started calling the woman offensive
words” and hit her with his stick twice in the head and in the shoulder.
Taking into account the aggressor’s old age, the court sentenced him to a Hr
28.50 fine for property damage and forced him to pay the victim Hr 500 in moral
damages.

In a similar incident in Sumy Oblast, cows
were the bone of contention.

In the summer of 2009, a middle-aged woman who
lives in the village of Baranivka, tried to graze her cows on the local
farmer’s land. When the farmer approached her saying that she was not allowed
to herd her cattle on his land, the woman attacked him with a stick, causing
minor body injuries. The court sentenced her to pay a Hr 500 fine, Hr 500 in
moral damages, and Hr 1,500 of the legal fees of her opponent.

Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]