A hooligan has been convicted in Vitebsk for unprovoked assault on a passerby
A court in Vitebsk heard the case of a hooligan who beat a woman on the street without reason, Yevgenia Prudnikova, assistant prosecutor of Vitebsk, told a BELTA correspondent.
The incident occurred at the end of February this year. A Vitebsk resident born in 1989, while intoxicated, without reason, verbally abused and attacked a woman walking on Kirova Street with her fists.
"She hit the victim with a bag of groceries, which also contained a bottle of vodka. When the bag tore and the bottle broke, the accused continued to beat her with her hands and feet, pushing the woman onto the roadway. Fortunately, the victim's fur coat protected her from serious injury. In addition, a security guard from a nearby store and a passerby intervened," explained Yevgenia Prudnikova.
Before the incident, the accused visited her grandmother and her partner. They are bedridden and under her care. After preparing food and tidying up, she found a bottle of vodka in the apartment and drank it. Then she went to the store.
There, she had a conflict with one of the customers. The accused threatened her with retribution on the street. But, apparently, she didn't wait for her and attacked another woman.
The hooligan was given a written undertaking not to leave and to behave properly. But later, she and the beaten woman accidentally met in a store. Threats from the former made the latter afraid. Then the accused was placed in a pre-trial detention center. She soon got married there.
This circumstance, the presence of elderly dependents, the apologies made by the accused in court, as well as the fully compensated claim for moral damages filed by the victim, and the softening of the victim's position influenced the court's decision.
He believed in the hooligan's potential for rehabilitation, despite her negative personal characteristics, and sentenced her to 4 years of restriction of liberty without being sent to an open-type correctional institution. She was also ordered to undergo compulsory treatment for chronic alcoholism.
"This case is a classic example of how alcohol abuse, unemployment, and an antisocial lifestyle lead to the commission of crimes. Whether this woman will be able to eliminate these causes and conditions for law violations from her life – time will tell. She will be under close supervision by the penal inspection of the internal affairs department at her place of residence and by the district inspector. If she violates the order and conditions of serving her sentence, the next measure will be imprisonment," concluded Evgenia Prudnikova.
Ekaterina Knyazeva