A military officer was detained Thursday after throwing 8-year-old twin girls out of the eighth-floor window of a Moscow apartment building, investigators said.
Both girls miraculously survived the fall and were rushed to St. Vladimir Hospital in northeastern Moscow. Doctors said one of them was in critical condition, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
“The research officer of Moscow troops unit No. 11,135, a captain-lieutenant, threw out the daughters of his common-law wife on Sayanskaya Ulitsa. After that he sent an SMS to their mother: ‘You can say goodbye to Dasha and Katya,’” the Investigative Committee said.
The unidentified officer was drunk when detained by police, it said. A criminal case has been opened. If charged with attempted murder, the man could be imprisoned for up to 15 years.
The 31-year-old officer worked at the 18th Central Scientific and Research Institute of the Interior Ministry and lived in a rented apartment in eastern Moscow with the twins’ mother, Interfax reported. “The detainee might have to undergo a psychiatric examination,” a law enforcement source told Interfax. It wasn’t immediately clear where the mother was at the time of the incident.
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