A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Sverdlovsk Region Office of the Investigative Committee as sufficient to convict two residents of the village of Palmino, Tabory District aged 54 and 42. They were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter under Part 1 of Article 109 of the RF Criminal Code.

The court and investigators have established that on the afternoon of 5 February 2017, two dogs owned by the defendants attacked a 7-year-old girl who was playing on a playground in Tsentralnay Street 38 in Palmino. The girl died of bites on the scene. Some children found the body and told adults and after that a medical worker arrived and declared the girl dead.

Although both of the defendants denied the charges, the investigators carried out a number of investigative operations enough to charge both of them. Namely, they conducted more than 40 questionings of witnesses and ran a postmortem of the body. They also ran some forensic DNA tests (including several in Saint Petersburg) and requested personal characteristics on both of the defendants. The DNA tests found that DNA found on the girl’s clothes belonged to the two dogs.

The court has sentenced the two men to 1 year 6 months of restriction of liberty. The court also awarded the girl’s relatives damages of 250 thousand rubles to by paid by each of the defendants.