57-year-old Aleksandr Mansurov shoots rapist and friend
The gruesome tale began last March and brings to mind the acclaimed 1999 Russian film “The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment.” A resident of the Severniy farmstead saw a Jiguli parked on the roadside near the Rostov-Salsk Highway with its doors flailing open.
“An abandoned car right on the highway? Weird!” she thought to herself. But as she approached the vehicle, she saw a young man inside caked in blood.
Investigators arrived at the scene and found another body close by. They later learned the murder victims were taxi driver Edik Khachikyan and his friend Vartan Markaryan.
Local residents had all sorts of guesses about what had happened. Several of them told the investigators that Khachikyan had raped the daughter of a local construction worker — Aleksandr Mansurov. Mansurov, they said, was tough and hot-headed.
But the police couldn’t track down the 57-year-old Mansurov right away. He and his eldest son Maksim had gone to Rostov-on-Don to find work. His wife, daughter and son had stayed behind. When Mansurov learned that the police were looking for him, he decided to surrender.
“I did it,” he said. And Mansurov proceeded to describe how the events had transpired.
“If you say too much, it won’t help you or your family…”
Alena’s preparatory courses had gone a bit late that fateful evening. She was only in the eleventh grade. It was already dark and she was too afraid to walk 5 kilometers home along the highway. So Alena decided to ask the boyfriend of her friend for help.
Khachikyan had driven Alena home on more than one occasion and she wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen. But this time, Khachikyan pulled into a forest belt off the highway, dragged Alena from the car and raped her.
“If you tell anyone about this or go to the police,” he said, “I’ll take care of you and all of your family.”
When Alena got home, she didn’t say anything to her mother about what had happened. She only found the courage to talk about the incident when her father came home a month later.
“I’ll handle this myself!”
Mansurov was always known for his bad temper. He decided that the police wouldn’t help as a month had already passed and took things into his own hands.
“When Dad got back from Rostov-on-Don,” Maksim said, “his face was just stone cold. He called me over and said he needed to go take care of some bastard.”
Mansurov called Khachikyan on his mobile, pretending to be a client. But Khachikyan recognized his voice, got scared and asked his friend Vartan to go with him. With his friend by his side, Khachikyan felt confident and began acting up in the vehicle.
“They started laughing at my sister and our family, and my father just couldn’t hold himself back,” Maksim said. “Even when I was a kid I always knew that my father would never let anyone do us any harm.”
The rapist just got away…
The court found that Mansurov had fired the first shot accidentally. The bullet hit Vartan in the head and killed him immediately.
Khachikyan then leaped out of the vehicle and Mansurov trailed after him. Mansurov chased him down and the two began fighting. Khachikyan managed to wrestle the gun away from Mansurov and shot him in the foot. But the injury couldn’t stop the offended father.
“He took them down on business,” some locals said. “Khachikyan was a druggie and raped his daughter.. Of course Mansurov shouldn’t have touched the other guy. But that’s just how the cards were dealt.”
“Mansurov acted like a real man like Mikhail Ulyanov in ‘The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment,'” other locals said. “What else could he do? The rumor had circled the village several times already that Khachikyan had raped his daughter and gotten away with it?!”
But members of the Armenian Diaspora say Mansurov’s daughter is to blame. They’re confident she seduced Khachikyan. The conflict spread in the village to the point where certain individuals promised to seek revenge on the Mansurov family. After learning about the threats, Mansurov’s friends and relatives began guarding their home. Fortunately, there have been no further deaths.
Mansurov was recently handed his sentence in Rostov-on-Don. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The severity of the sentence shocked wife and children. They plan to appeal the verdict. READ MORE
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