MOSCOW, January 4 (RIA Novosti) – Police have detained and charged a Russian man who threw a grenade at two policemen in the Moscow suburbs, killing one and seriously injuring the other, investigators said Saturday.
The suspect, who investigators said was born in 1954, has been charged with illegally possessing explosives and making an attempt on the life of a law enforcement officer after he attacked the policemen in the city of Zheleznodorozhny, east of Moscow, on Friday morning.
The officers had responded to the scene of a car accident between a Russian-made Lada VAZ-2104 and a BMW and were completing paperwork when the Lada driver lobbed a grenade at them and fled, said Olga Vrady, the spokeswoman for the regional Investigative Committee.
Police detained the man, who they said was intoxicated at the time of the crime, later Friday. A search of the suspect’s home turned up grenade pins and a traumatic weapon, as well as the jacket he was wearing at the scene of the crime, Vrady said.
Police said the suspect first claimed his relative, a former riot police officer, had given him the grenade, but later said that he had found it in the woods.
The relative voluntarily reported for questioning, police said on Saturday, and claimed that he had not talked to the suspect and did not know the origin of the grenade.
