Broken arm and nose, head wound: in Zatoka, man beats serviceman with rebar over remark about Russian music. VIDEO+PHOTOS
In the village of Zatoka, Odesa region, on the territory of a hotel, a man brutally beat an active-duty serviceman and ATO veteran who had reprimanded him over Russian music. The attacker strangled the victim with rebar in front of two small children.
This was reported by the wife of the injured defender, who described in detail the incident that took place at the hotel on July 4, a Censor.NET correspondent reports.
Details
According to the woman, she and her husband, ATO veteran and combatant Serhii Pihura, had arrived for a vacation. That same day, one of the holidaymakers on the hotel grounds turned on Russian tracks.
According to his wife Kateryna, her husband politely asked him to turn off the music of the aggressor country, to which he heard in response: "I will listen to whatever I want," after which the man made it even louder. When Serhii came closer and said that he was a serviceman, the man came right up to him, provoking a scuffle.
The events then unfolded within minutes: the attacker, identified as Viktor Borysovych Stopchynskyi, grabbed an electric hotplate and hit the serviceman in the shoulder with it. When Kateryna tried to separate the men, the attacker grabbed a piece of metal rebar and began swinging it. Serhii put up his arm to protect his wife and received a strong blow, while the next blow with the rebar landed directly on the veteran’s head. As he was losing consciousness, the serviceman fell, after which the attacker began strangling him with the rebar, Kateryna recalls.
All this happened in front of the couple’s two small children, who were very frightened and cried. Through the joint efforts of his wife and witnesses who ran over after hearing the screams, the attacker was pulled away. Even after that, the abuser grabbed an even larger metal rod and again lunged at the serviceman, shouting: "I will kill you!"
An ambulance and law enforcement officers were called to the scene.
"Serhii Pihura is currently receiving inpatient treatment at a hospital in the village of Ovidiopol. Despite the severity of his injuries — a concussion, a head wound, a broken nose and arm, as well as stitches on his face — as of July 9, law enforcement officers of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi district still have not questioned the injured serviceman," the defender’s wife says.
"The police did not immediately do what they were supposed to do: the attacker was not questioned, he was not tested for alcohol or drug intoxication, and witnesses were not interviewed. They only took explanations and took the pipe for examination. It feels as if they simply want to ‘hush up’ the case. My husband was assigned a young investigator with no experience, who does not even know what an investigative experiment is," the veteran’s wife says indignantly.
The family fears that the case is being deliberately delayed.
What is known about the attacker?
As Kateryna found out, Viktor Stopchynskyi is a well-known figure in the region. Local residents and bloggers from the city of Podilsk reported that the man already has at least two open criminal proceedings.
According to eyewitnesses, the man had previously attacked people with a pistol. Stopchynskyi broke the jaw of one local blogger in Podilsk.
After the incident gained publicity on social media, Kateryna learned that Stopchynskyi had allegedly repeatedly "paid off" the police, which is why he feels impunity and continues to promote the "Russian world" and attack people.
