Police say they have identified the perpetrator of the fatal shooting in Polus Center on February 1 and are now looking into his whereabouts, Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák said on Tuesday, February 5, in Bratislava without revealing further details.
Several shots were fired Friday at around 3:30 p.m., killing one and wounding another two people, who were taken to hospital. Five suspects were arrested, one of whom is a Slovak national and four Russian-speaking foreigners. Three of the five detained suspects have now been released. The victim of the fatal shooting was a Slovak national.
Reporting to the Parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, Kaliňák said the shooting is believed to have resulted from a conflict between Slovak and Austrian gangs. Police have also found that both gangs included four members, and are investigating the nationality of a ninth person whose whereabouts is not known. However, there is extensive closed circuit camera footage of the incident, the TASR newswire wrote.
The shooting appears not to have been planned, even though those involved turned up in their own cars. Reports indicate that a war of words between Dagestanis and Chechens, sitting separately and hurling verbal hostilities at one another, simply got out of control. Police are evaluating 400 pieces of evidence collected at the scene and expect to conclude the investigation within a week to ten days. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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