Wounded shooter held after fatal shooting of police officer in Bulgarian town
A special operation in the Bulgarian town of Lyaskovets had ended with the arrest of a 53-year-old psychologically ill man who earlier shot dead a police officer and wounded three others, Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev told the National Assembly in a special announcement on March 14.
The operation was mounted after the latest complaint of the man having issued death threats against pupils at a school near where he lived.
Yovchev outlined to Parliament the man’s track record of psychological problems, including a high level of aggression and emotional instability, and said that the man had a stash of firearms including carbines and shotguns.
Earlier, it emerged that the man had lived as a hermit since 2010.
The interior minister told MPs that the man had isolated himself from society and only his mother left the house to do shopping.
An operation to seize the firearms had been planned for March 2011 but had been cancelled, for reasons he could not state, Yovchev said.
Following the latest complaint from the school’s headmaster on March 12 2014, the March 14 operation had been planned.
It started at 6am and in the course to trying to enter the man’s residence, two police officers were wounded. The police withdrew and when they returned, the man at first faked surrender and then opened fire, killing one police officer and wounding another.
Media reports from the scene in the course of the morning said that police sealed off the area and that other residents of the building had been evacuated. Classes at the school were cancelled for the day.
Yovchev told Parliament that police had again moved into the house, and the 53-year-old had been arrested. He was injured and was being flown by helicopter to Sofia for medical treatment.
The three wounded police were said to be not in a serious condition.
After Yovchev concluded his statement to the National Assembly, MPs rose for a minute of silence in tribute to the police officer who died in the operation.
Related story:
Police officer dies in siege of house of Bulgarian man who ‘threatened to shoot school pupils’
