Police chief goes on killing spree

AN off-duty Russian police chief went on a killing spree at a Moscow shop, leaving three people dead and at least six injured, Russian news agencies reported.

Major Denis Yevsyukov, head of police of Tsaritsyno district, first shot dead the driver of a car he was travelling in and then entered a shop where he unleashed a barrage of gunfire.

Yevsyukov “fatally shot the driver of the Chevrolet Lanos he was being driven in,” a spokesman for the Russian prosecutor’s investigative committee, Vladimir Markin, told RIA Novosti. “The police head then entered the Ostrov supermarket and continued firing. As a result a female cashier and a man were killed. Another six people received gunshot wounds of varying degrees. The shooter was detained.”

An investigation was under way, with initial reports suggesting the district police head was of unsound mind and had family problems. Other reports noted management problems in the southern Moscow area concerned, which led to a number of resignations of its leadership in the last week.

The pistol used in the shooting was not the chief’s but had been sought in a criminal investigation in the Rostov region.