Support The Moscow Times!

At Least 5 Killed in Moscow Office Shooting

Dmitry Vinogradov's profile picture on the Vkontakte social-networking site.

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.

Read more