Prosecutors on Tuesday asked that former Moscow police major Denis Yevsyukov be sentenced to life in prison for purportedly killing two people and injuring three in a drunken shooting rampage in a local supermarket last year.
Closing statements began at the Moscow City Court on Tuesday in the trial of Yevsyukov, who is charged with two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder in connection with a shooting spree in the Ostrov supermarket in southern Moscow in the early morning hours of April 27.
The shooting spree, to which Yevsyukov has partially admitted, set off a wave of public outrage over abuses and endemic corruption in the country's police force and prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to remove long-serving Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin.
Yevsyukov, who was drunk the night of the crime, is charged with shooting and killing the taxi driver who drove him to the supermarket as well as a female cashier.
Video surveillance cameras captured footage of Yevsyukov shooting the woman dead, and he has admitted to killing the woman based on the video. He claims, however, that he has no recollection of the shootings and has not admitted to killing the cab driver.
A verdict in the trial is expected next week.
Yevsyukov has denied that he is guilty of premeditated murder. “There were no reasons for me to kill,” he testified earlier in the trial.
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