In Russia’s Rostov region, investigators have opened a criminal case over the killing of two women and one man aged 60, 64, and 86 in Taganrog. The regional Investigative Committee announced the case.
According to the Telegram channel Baza, 44-year-old former police officer Yevgeny Utesov is suspected of carrying out the attack. The outlet says the victims were the father, mother, and grandmother of his former wife, Taganrog city duma deputy Oksana Goncharova.
The outlet Bloknot also reported a possible accomplice. According to its account, Utesov’s 69-year-old father helped his son leave the scene of the crime. No official information has been released about his detention.
Utesov himself, TASS reported citing the Rostov police press service, was detained in the Proletarsky district of Rostov-on-Don and then taken to investigators.
Mediazona found that Utesov served in the Interior Ministry from 2005 to 2017. In January 2017, he was dismissed from his post as a senior operative in the regional criminal investigation unit dealing with organized and ethnic crime for a gross breach of service discipline. The case concerned repeated absences linked to illness and childcare. A court initially reinstated him, but by August of the same year he was dismissed again.
The second dismissal was based on the fact that in 2002, before joining the force, Utesov had faced a criminal case over inflicting moderate bodily harm. That case was later dropped after reconciliation between the parties, but he was not allowed to return to the police after the second dismissal.
According to the commercial database Kontur Fokus, Utesov worked as a sole proprietor from 2019 to 2026, training vehicle drivers. Court records in Taganrog show that Goncharova and Utesov had been suing each other since at least October 2023. In one of the latest rulings, Mediazona reports, the deputy tried to challenge a real estate gift agreement under which Utesov transferred property to his father, arguing that the deal was fictitious and intended to avoid allocating shares to the children. The court rejected her claim.