In-House Russian Lawyer Accused of Shooting 7, Slaying 5, at Company's Moscow Offices
A 30-year-old Russian in-house lawyer is reportedly in custody and being questioned by investigators, accused of shooting to death four colleagues as they sat at their desks at the Moscow offices of a pharmaceutical company, killing another man at the stairs and and gravely wounding two other individuals.
The Russian Investigative Committee said Dmitry Vinogradov gave himself up to security guards after the Wednesday morning shootings at the Rigla pharmacy chain in northeast Moscow. Dressed in camouflage gear and armed with two semiautomatic rifles, he shot simultaneously from two guns, a spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
The New York Daily News shows a screenshot of Vinogradov’s page on VKontakte, a Russian social media site that is equivalent to Facebook.
On it, he proclaims “I hate mankind and life itself. I see only one way to justify it: Kill as many pieces of human compost as possible … this is the only way to make the world better.”
Local media accounts quoted his mother as saying that Vinogradov had gone into a deep depression after breaking up in January with his girlfriend, who worked in the financial department of the company. A five-day drinking binge also reportedly fueled Wednesday’s shooting rampage, the AFP and Daily News articles recount. The ex-girlfriend reportedly was not injured.
