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Former Bolshoi Ballerina Leaps From Moscow Courtroom Window

Moscow's Bolshoi Theater Creative Commons

A ballerina who formerly danced with the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet Theater flung herself from the second-story window of a central Moscow courthouse, but escaped the incident without serious injury, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.

Irina Dmitriyeva had been attending a civil court hearing in an apartment dispute with her ex-husband, the former director of the Moscow Art Theater Leonid Monastyrsky, Interfax reported.

But as the judge was deliberating, Dmitriyeva threw herself from the window, Interfax cited a court spokesperson as saying. Her fall was broken by a canopy hanging above an entrance to the building, and she was not seriously injured.

It was not immediately clear why Dmitriyeva decided to jump out of the window, and she has since been sent to a psychiatric hospital for examination, Interfax cited an unidentified law enforcement source as saying.

Monastyrsky was sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 after arranging to have Dmitriyeva, his daughter and his son-in-law murdered in a bid to gain sole ownership of their flat, although the plan fell through when the hit man he had hired informed the police, news site Gazeta.ru reported at the time.

After being released from prison, Monastyrsky was unable to return to the apartment on Malaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa in central Moscow and filed a lawsuit against his former wife, the source told Interfax.

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