On 17 January 2017, law enforcement bodies got a report that in broad daylight an unidentified man grabbed a 12-year-old girl near a house in Rodimtsev street in Orenburg, shoved her in the trunk of his car and took off in an unknown direction. While in the trunk the girl phoned her mother. The Orenburg Region Office of the Investigative Committee opened an investigation in a crime under Part 2, items “a” and “c” of Article 126 of the RF penal Code and mounted a search.
An emergency operations center was set up at the initiative of the regional investigative authority. Investigators, employees of regional offices of the Interior Ministry and Emergency Ministry worked coherently to catch the kidnapper and find the girl. The wanted notice, the description of the kidnapper and the car he may have been using were broadcast many times on TV, in mass media and sent by texts to tens of thousands of cell phones. The results of the search were updated online in social networks, were analyzed and checked by investigators.
Soon enough more than 160 members of different volunteer movements joined in, including SAR Team OrenSpas, and a lot of local residents. The incident drew such a wide response that telephones of emergency services and A Child in Danger line at the regional investigative authority rang off the hook. To find the girl quicker, the search party divided into teams who looked for eye-witnesses and surveillance cameras which could have caught the kidnapping or the route of the kidnapper; others looked into each backyard and flat to find any trace. They examined hotels, garages, service stations and woods in the town and a lot of other locations.
An hour later the investigators had information that the kidnapper acted alone and had committed the crime at the second try: 10 minutes before he had used the same car trying to kidnap two girls who had fought back. The description of the attacker suggested that it was one and the same person. Using surveillance cameras’ footage the investigators soon establish the kidnapper’s car, its model, description and some figures on its number plate. However no such car number was found on the register. All similar vehicles were checked on the database until of the cars matched the description. That day the car was used by Yuri Tiunov who had come from Perm Territory.
Tiunov was detained and at first denied any involvement in the kidnapping insisting that the girl had willing gotten into his car. During a number of well-planned interrogations and under the load of evidence proving his guilty, the man finally confessed to the crime. In addition, the two girls who had escaped from the kidnapper recognized him. By now the man has been charged with kidnapping of a child and has been placed in custody pending trial.
The investigators have ordered a lot of forensic examinations, including a DNA test; they have confiscated and are now examining the clothes of the girls the man had tried to kidnap. The investigators have also seized from the man’s car bottles with different liquids he gave to the girl, presumably to dope her so that she could not resist him. Chemical and other inquiries have been ordered to determine the contents of the bottles and if there were drugs, psychotropic or alcohol substances in the blood of the kidnapper and the girl.
The investigators are going to check if Tiunov has been involved in other similar crimes in both Orenburg Region and other regions of Russia. By now, the investigators have information that Tiunov’s DNA has matched the one of a person who sexually abused two children in perm territory in 2011.
The way the crime has been solved inspires deep respect to volunteers, all local residents and media representatives who treated the incident as their personal problem and displayed unity and manifested best human qualities. The Investigative Committee is grateful to all citizens who cared, whose vigilance helped to find the girl alive and probably to prevent another kidnapping. It is only thanks to the unity of law enforcement agents, volunteers, reporters and residents of the town, that the child was found in a short time, that possible negative consequences were avoided and other crimes were prevented.
Acting Head of Media Relations S.L. Petrenko
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