A young lawyer is accused of killing five people and wounding two others Wednesday in a shooting rampage in northern Moscow.
The suspected shooter, Dmitry Vinogradov, 30, who worked as a legal adviser for the Rigla pharmaceutical company, came to his office on Chermyanskaya Ulitsa, near the Medvedkovo metro station, around 8 a.m. Wednesday and opened fire on colleagues with two hunting rifles, killing two women and three men, Gazeta.ru reported.
Vinogradov wounded two more people, a man and a woman, before being restrained by security guards, the report said. He used Saiga and Benelli hunting rifles, which he owned, investigators said in a statement.
RIA-Novosti, citing investigators, said Vinogradov had been on a five-day drinking binge before the killing spree, adding that he was depressed after falling in love with a female co-worker who spurned his advances.
The 24-year-old co-worker was among those shot, Interfax reported, adding that she suffered a severe chest wound and was rushed to an intensive care ward in Moscow's Hospital No. 20. A police source told Interfax that the shooter's five victims were aged between 25 and 33 years old.
At 4:56 a.m. Wednesday, a matter of hours before the spree, Vinogradov published a manifesto on his VKontakte page describing his hatred for people and the emptiness of modern life.
"I hate society, and I hate being a part of it! I hate the futility of life! I hate life itself! I see only one way of justifying existence: to destroy as much of the human compost pile as possible," he wrote.
Vinogradov has been charged with the murder of two or more people, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
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