A lawyer was killed and two police officers were injured during a shooting in central Vilnius during an eviction procedure.
The shooting took place in a building close to a polling station.
The officers were shot at in a building on Vasario 16-osios Street, near or inside the apartment where the suspected shooter was holed up.
According to the police, the officers came to evict the suspected shooter from the apartment at around 10:15. The shooter initially barricaded himself in the apartment, but later surrendered.
"Nobody is in danger, people can be reassured," Matonis later told Elta.
He confirmed to LRT.lt that one officer was injured in the chest and another in the leg. They have been handed over to medics.
“There is no risk to the officers’ lives. They were saved by bulletproof vests. The officers escaped serious injuries,” said Matonis.
Two more people, a bailiff and a lawyer, were involved.
Officials later confirmed that lawyer Leonid Pšelincev, 69, was killed in the shooting.
“It is very painful and worrying that court proceedings – evictions, family conflicts – are psychologically sensitive and put people under stress. It is our duty to ensure, to make it clear to people that court decisions must be obeyed and enforced,” chairman of the Bar Council Mindaugas Kukaitis told LRT.lt.
Kukaitis stressed that the lawyer, the bailiff and the police officers were carrying out a legitimate mission. He stressed that the tragedy shows that it is necessary to control who gets access to weapons.
The killed lawyer was representing the wife in a divorce case, Kukaitis told LRT.lt. The court had ruled that her husband was to be evicted from the home.
According to the president of the Lithuanian Chamber of Bailiffs, Irmantas Gaidelis, no bailiff was killed in the incident.
The bailiff was there to execute a court decision.
“The bailiff’s assistant was carrying out the eviction, and there was a shootout,” he told LRT RADIO.
“To my knowledge, this is a divorce case. As a consequence of the execution of this judgment, the bailiff and the officers went to the place and a shootout took place,” Gaidelis said.
Viktoras Grabauskas, adviser to the Police Commissioner General, has confirmed to LRT that the suspect surrendered to the police.
The building is close to Lukiškių Square, one of the venues of early voting in Lithuania’s general elections.
The Central Election Commission has told BNS that voting has not been stopped due to the incident.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė was scheduled to cast her vote in the polling station on Lukiškių Square on Thursday noon but decided to go to another station instead.
Illegal weapon
At a media conference held several hours after the shooting, Police Commissioner General Renatas Požėla said that police had no information about a legally owned weapon in the apartment.
“We had no information that a weapon could be legally held in this apartment. It’s very likely that this weapon was not registered anywhere; in other words, it was an illegal weapon,” he told the press conference.
Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė emphasised that the police officers’ lives were saved by life vests.
“Protective gear, in this case, the vests, protected them,” Bilotaitė told journalists in the capital.
The male officer was hit in the heart area, according to Požėla. As a result, he dropped a communications device and could not immediately call backup. He ran into the street and asked members of the public to call help.
The female officer was injured in a leg. Požėla said that she received medical care in an ambulance and refused to go to hospital.
The shooter initially holed up in the apartment. According to the police commissioner general, when additional forces came to the scene, they managed to contact the suspect and convinced him to surrender.
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