Rakovica Parking Fire Destroys Three Cars in Belgrade
According to unofficial information, a young man set a Skoda on fire with a torch on the night of October 11 to 12, and the blaze spread to two more vehicles.
Three passenger cars burned completely or partly at a parking lot in Belgrade’s Rakovica on the night of October 11 to 12. According to unofficial information, the fire was set deliberately: a young man walked up to a parked Skoda, set it alight with a torch and fled at once. No one was injured, and police are searching for the suspect on the prosecutor’s orders.
What happened at the Rakovica parking lot?
The Skoda was set alight first, and only a charred shell remains. Two cars parked right next to it caught fire within seconds and were badly damaged. Firefighters kept the flames from spreading to the rest of the lot.
Everything known about the cause rests on unofficial information and a surveillance camera recording that surfaced publicly. According to those accounts, the footage shows a young man approaching the Skoda, setting it on fire with a torch and running away.
What does a resident of a nearby building say?
One resident of the building next to the parking lot, whose name has not been published, described the first minutes of the fire:
“A loud bang and the sound of breaking glass woke me up. When I looked out the window, the flames were already huge and swallowing the car. Someone in the building immediately shouted, ‘A car is on fire, call the firefighters!’ It all happened within a few minutes, and the fire jumped straight to the neighbors’ cars parked beside it. The only luck was that nobody was walking by at that moment and that the firefighters arrived in record time, otherwise the whole parking lot would have burned down.”
The same resident said the fire spread from the first vehicle to the neighboring ones right away, which matches the damage seen at the lot.
What has the police done so far?
Police went to the scene and carried out an on-site investigation. Recordings from surrounding surveillance cameras have been seized. The Second Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade has been notified, and on its orders officers are searching for the young man who fled after the fire. The suspect has not been identified.
In photographs from the scene published by Telegraf, a child’s car seat can be seen on the back seat of one of the burned cars.
What is still unknown?
The available sources contain no official statement from police or prosecutors on the cause of the fire. The following is also unknown:
- which street the parking lot is on and at what exact time the fire broke out
- the makes of the two other damaged cars
- who owns the vehicles
- why the Skoda was reportedly the target
We previously reported on a fire in Mirijevo, where four cars burned near a residential building. The sources do not say the two cases are connected.
