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Title: Mayor Shot 14 Times at Midnight
Source:
Moscow Times
URL Source: [None]
Published: Apr 2, 2006
Author: Carl Schreck
Post Date: 2006-04-02 23:00:16 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 14
Dzerzhinsky Mayor Viktor Dorkin was walking home at around midnight after speaking on live television when he was apparently attacked by two men with handguns, Channel One television reported, citing investigators. Dorkin was shot 10 times in the head and four times in the chest, Channel One said. Dorkin rarely traveled with bodyguards, according to media reports. Dorkin's body was discovered at around 3 a.m. in a playground, said a spokeswoman for the Moscow region prosecutor's office. Dorkin, 52, had since 1991 presided over the administration of Dzerzhinsky, a major military-industrial city in the region, and investigators believe his murder was connected to his official duties, said the spokeswoman, who declined to give her name. She said she could not say who discovered Dorkin's body. Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Savchenko is personally overseeing the investigation, and he visited the crime scene Monday morning. "There are a lot of questions," Savchenko said on NTV television. "Dorkin worked in this post for more than 15 years. Right now, we are studying all aspects of his work and all of the people he may have had conflicts with." Dorkin was assaulted two years ago, but the assailants were never found, NTV reported. Itar-Tass reported that until a new election could be held, Dorkin would be replaced by one of his deputies. A woman who answered the phone at the reception of the mayor's office on Friday said no one was available to comment. Dorkin was elected head of the Dzerzhinsky City Council in 1990 and named mayor a year later. He was named Russia's best mayor in 1995, Gazeta.ru reported. He was re-elected in 1996 and 1999. Dorkin is the seventh mayor of a Moscow region town to have been slain since 1996. Intrigue has long clung to Moscow regional politics. A year ago this month, police arrested Podolsk Mayor Alexander Fokin and charged him with hiring three men in 2002 to kill Pyotr Zabrodin, then Podolsk's deputy mayor, in order to eliminate a potential rival in the city's 2003 mayoral election, which Fokin subsequently won. Fokin denied the charges, and, officials say, hung himself while being held at the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center on Nov. 7. Fokin's relatives have expressed doubt that he committed suicide, and his daughter has said he may have been killed.
The bullet-riddled body of a Moscow region mayor was found in a children's playground close to his home early Friday in what prosecutors believe was a contract murder.
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