Axe, knife and gas pistol seized on Kragujevac square
Police searched V. P., born in 2007, on Vojvoda Radomir Putnik Square in Kragujevac and took an axe, a knife with an 11.5-centimetre blade and a gas pistol. A misdemeanour charge follows.
Police in Kragujevac searched a young man born in 2007, identified only as V. P., on Vojvoda Radomir Putnik Square at around 5.20 p.m. on Saturday, August 1, and found an axe, a knife with a blade 11.5 centimetres long and a gas pistol on him. Serbia’s Interior Ministry (MUP) says he was held for up to 24 hours.
The search was prompted by the way he was behaving. According to the MUP statement, officers searched V. P., “whose behaviour aroused suspicion”.
What was taken off him
Along with the axe and the knife, officers seized other objects capable of causing injury. The statement lists:
- an axe
- a knife with an 11.5-centimetre blade
- a gas pistol
- other objects suitable for attack and for causing injury
The search took place in the pedestrian zone, the part of Kragujevac that carries the heaviest foot traffic on a Saturday afternoon. The Tanjug news agency reported that the spot is close to a stand run by activists of the Serbian Progressive Party. The ministry does not mention that detail, and it does not say whether the man was moving towards anyone or whether there was any contact with passers-by.
The charge that follows
V. P. faces a misdemeanour charge on suspicion of breaching the Law on Weapons and Ammunition. For now, then, the case sits on the misdemeanour track rather than the criminal one. The public prosecutor with jurisdiction has been informed.
The ministry released only his initials and year of birth, with no name and no photograph of him. Until a competent body rules, he is a man suspected of a misdemeanour and nothing beyond that.
The forensic report decides the rest
The gas pistol has been sent for forensic examination. An expert is to establish whether the weapon works and whether there are elements of any other criminal offence, the police statement says.
That finding will set the weight of the case. If the examination shows the pistol was modified or is able to fire a projectile, the file leaves the misdemeanour frame and the decision moves to the prosecutor’s office. If it confirms a factory-standard gas weapon, the misdemeanour charge stands and the axe and knife remain seized items.
That is the only open question here. Everything else, the place, the time, the list of seized objects and the detention order, is already in the police statement. The expert’s report is the one piece that can still change the charge, and it does not arrive the same day.
