News

A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Jewish Autonomous Region Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to convict a 37-year-old long-distance truck driver and his 35-year-old friend from Sverdlovsk Region. They were found guilty of crimes under Part 2, item “a” of Article 131, Part 2, item “a’ of Article 132 of the RF Penal Code (rape and sexual abuse using violence and committed by a group of people in conspiracy). In addition, the 35-year-old man was also found guilty of a crime under Part 2, item “c” of Article 158 of the RF Penal Code (larceny that entailed considerable damage) and the driver of a crime under Part 2, item “j’ of The RF Penal Code (rape-related murder).

The preliminary investigation and court inquiry have established that on 4 May 2015, the truck driver and his passenger offered to give a lift to a woman hitching a lift in the city of Khabarovsk. During the ride through Jewish Autonomous Region they raped the woman and one of the men stole her cell phone. In order to conceal the crimes, the driver threw the naked woman out the truck and ran her over realizing that she would die. The woman died on the scene of blunt force traumas to her head, chest, stomach and limbs. The body was found on the 1866^th km of the federal motorway between the cities of Chita and Khabarovsk on a bus stop near the settlement of Izvestkovy, Obluchye District. The perpetrators fled the scene.

During the investigation, the truck with the two suspects was stopped in Transbaikalian Territory. The investigators searched the truck and found biological evidence of the crimes. They also seized the clothes and other things owned by the victim from the places pointed by the suspects. The major crimes were solved in shortest time thanks to well-planned work of the investigators and police operatives from Jewish Autonomous Region, Amure Region, Khabarovsk and Transbaikalian Territories.

As became known earlier, the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Based on this verdict a court has sentenced the 37-year-old driver from Kemerovo Region 25 years and the 35-year-old accomplice from Sverdlovsk Region 10 year in a maximum–security correctional facility.