Shooting at Kyiv territorial recruitment center: suspect is in hospital with a traumatic brain injury

Aleksey Kovalsky, 42, suspected of shooting three police officers and three employees of the Territorial Recruitment Center on October 19 in Pechersk, is in a prison ward under guard in one of the capital’s hospitals.

This is reported by “Strana.”

The Pechersk court arrested Kovalsky on his birthday — October 21 — for 60 days. The hearing was not broadcast. According to the publication’s sources, the suspect was brought to the sanction hearing in a wheelchair — he was unable to move on his own.

Kovalsky’s lawyer Serhiy Osyka claims that his client was severely beaten after his detention. At the same time, the defense attorney says that after the shooting Kovalsky surrendered to law enforcement himself. According to sources at the medical facility where he is being treated, he has a closed traumatic brain injury, a concussion and a broken nose. Police sources, in turn, say that after the shooting he was indeed detained roughly.

A whole arsenal of weapons was found in Kovalsky’s apartment in the capital after the shooting and detention. He himself walked down the street wearing a bulletproof vest under his clothes with a loaded SigSauer pistol, popular among Western special services. He handled the weapon very confidently, which may indicate combat experience.

The capital’s police are conducting an internal investigation into the wounding of three police officers.

According to the publication, Kovalsky opened fire in Pechersk near the building of the Territorial Recruitment Center. He was stopped by an alert group together with police officers on Monday at around 20:00 on Lesya Ukrainka Boulevard. He was listed in the database as a draft evader, so it was decided to take him to the Territorial Recruitment Center. When putting him into the car, the police officers did not conduct a superficial search, so the man got into the car with a weapon.

Later, upon arriving at the premises of the Territorial Recruitment Center in the lobby, when they tried to search him, he drew a pistol and fired seven shots. Judging by the tightness of the shot grouping, he has a thorough command of firearms. Three police officers and three Territorial Recruitment Center employees received injuries of varying severity. The shooter was detained by other police officers who were present at the scene.

Former head of the Donetsk region police Vyacheslav Abroskin criticized the police’s actions, since its officers did not check for weapons immediately after the man’s detention.

A proper search of a detainee is the “ABC of personal safety,” Abroskin says.

It was also previously reported that the mobilized man who opened fire in the building of the Territorial Recruitment Center in Kyiv’s Pechersk district faces life imprisonment.