Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has named three theories about a police shooting incident in the village of Kniazhychi in Kyiv region, when five members of the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were shot dead early in December, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
The preliminary assessment of the events shows that the first cause behind the tragedy is negligence on the part of executives of a police operation to arrest a gang of burglars, Lutsenko told journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday, December 21.
The second cause could be the absence of rotating beacons on a car of the State Guard Service, a law enforcement force that protects property. The beacons are used for identification of the service.
The fact that the senior officers who were in charge of the operation ordered to release the detained law enforcement officers without a preliminary investigation into the situation could be the third cause behind the tragedy.
As UNIAN reported earlier, five law enforcement officers were killed amid a shootout between the State Guard Service and the police in Kniazhychi in the early hours of December 4.
Undercover police officers from the criminal investigation department and a SWAT team had been watching the scene to detain the burglars, but a burglar alarm had gone off in a house nearby, prompting the arrival of a State Guard Service group.
The latter detained the police officers, having mistaken them for the burglars.
The special police officers then mistakenly decided the criminals had captured their undercover colleagues and opened fire. Two State Guard Service members, two undercover police officers and a SWAT team member were killed.
