English

February blast in apartment building in Minsk’s Serabranka neighborhood blamed on suicide attempt

An investigation found that the February 23 blast and subsequent fire in an apartment building in Minsk’s Serabranka neighborhood, which claimed the lives of two tenants, had most likely been caused by a suicide attempt, Alyaksandr Herasimaw, spokesperson for the Minsk city office of the Investigative Committee, told BelaPAN on Thursday.

According to Mr. Herasimaw, experts rejected the theory that the explosion resulted from either the careless handling of gas equipment or malfunctioning gas equipment or somebody's intention to kill the tenants, a 71-year-old woman and her 46-year-old son.

A special commission established that the explosion had been caused by the ignition of a high-concentration air-methane mixture, which had only been possible if the gas

A postmortem psychiatric examination of the man found that the man had suffered from a mental condition, which might have led to the suicide attempt, Mr. Herasimaw said.

The Minsk city office of the Investigative Committee has therefore decided to close the case because of the lack of any evidence of criminal activity, Mr. Herasimaw added.

The accident on Plyakhanava Street was reported at 4:43 p.m. Upon arrival at the scene, firefighters found smoke and flames coming from windows of two apartments on the last floor of the number 85 building. The blaze was put out by 6 p.m. Rescuers discovered two charred human bodies in one of the apartments identified as Zoya Trushkevich and her son Ihar Trushkevich.

The residents of all the apartments in that stairwell and the households living in four apartments in the next stairwell had to be evacuated after engineers concluded that there was a threat of collapse.