KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st August, 2020) Ukrainian law enforcement officers tracked down and neutralized Roman Skripnik, who had previously held a police officer hostage in Poltava, Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said on Saturday.
Last week, the Poltava region police reported that a man whom they wanted to detain for stealing a car was threatening to detonate a grenade. Later, the man took a police officer hostage and left the scene in a car provided by the police. His key demand was to escape criminal liability. The captor eventually fled, abandoning the car and releasing the hostage unharmed.
According to Gerashchenko, the assailant briefly took another officer hostage before he was killed in a special police force raid.
"On August 1, at about 02:00 a.m. [23:00 GMT], on the outskirts of the village of Opishnya, Zenkovsky district, during a search to find Skripnik... Police Captain Guma [no first name provided] entered an uninhabited house and found the criminal. Skripnik, threatening with a grenade, took the policeman hostage. Guma had a service weapon with him. Special police operation 'Thunder' was launched to detain the attacker. The assailant was eliminated by the officers of the KORD special forces with an accurate shot," Gerashchenko wrote on his Facebook.
The hostage was not injured in the operation, Gerashchenko added.
The manhunt in the Poltava province had been underway since the first hostage-taking incident on July 23. Skripnik was pursued on a number of criminal charges that would have landed him behind bars for the rest of his biological life.
