Robbery attack on Polotsk taxi driver uncovered

July 16, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. A robbery attack on a Polotsk taxi driver has been solved, the information and public relations department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee's Internal Affairs Directorate told a BELTA correspondent. In the evening of July 12, a self-employed businessman from Polotsk, who provides passenger transportation services in his car, was attacked by a passenger. The man, who asked to be taken to a lake in the village of Trosno, near this settlement, instead of paying the fare, attacked the taxi driver with a knife. The robber, who managed to escape, stole Br460 thousand. The victim was helped by vacationers at the lake, who called the police and an ambulance. The self-employed businessman was taken to the hospital with multiple stab wounds to the abdominal cavity, chest, head, and right thigh. A task force led by the deputy head of the criminal police of the regional Internal Affairs Directorate did a tremendous job identifying the attacker: a thorough inspection of the scene, processing recordings from a dozen external surveillance cameras at the Polotsk railway station, where the robber got into the taxi, yielded results. Coordinated interaction between the operational services of the Internal Affairs Directorate, the Polotsk district and city departments, the forensic unit, and the Investigative Committee made it possible to identify the suspect with certainty within two days. He turned out to be a resident of Polotsk born in 1987. He has been detained. A criminal case has been initiated against the man for robbery under Part 3 of Article 207 of the Criminal Code of Belarus, which provides for 8 to 15 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. Attacks on taxi drivers have been rare in recent years, the Internal Affairs Directorate noted. A similar case occurred in the Rossony district in 2009. Two young men, intoxicated, killed a taxi driver from Novopolotsk. As it turned out, the young men were driven by the desire to seize the car. At that time, law enforcement agencies managed to quickly solve the crime thanks to the assistance of taxi drivers. -0-