Man brutally rapes girlfriend's ex with shovel handle after seeing them walking together during lockdown
A Ukrainian teenager was brutally assaulted and raped with the handle of a shovel by his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend after he caught them walking during coronavirus lockdown.
Vyacheslav 'Slava' Tunguskov, 17, was beaten and abused in front of his former girlfriend Angelika Melnik after they were spotted together by her boyfriend Dmitry Belik, 31, according to the Sun.
The attack is said to have taken place after Tunguskov had lashed out at Angelika's friend, who had also joined them for the walk. Angered, Belik, and his friend, Vladimir Kazban, 38, took matters into their own hands, bound and gagged the teen, and beat him for several hours.
The assault reportedly took place in a barn near Rogan village in the Kharkiv region of the country, with Tunguskov's mother Lyudmila sharing the gruesome details to the media.
"Slava told me that he had been beaten for several hours, raped with a shovel handle, and beaten with iron bars," she said. "They tied his hands, legs, head with tape, gagged him, and poured vodka forcefully down his throat."
"They washed off the blood with vodka," she continued. "They immediately smashed a telephone over his head so that he could not call."
Kazban filmed the entire incident while Angelika watched, it has been claimed, and the assault ended after Tunguskov was slashed across the back and she ran out of the barn screaming.
"Perhaps this is what stopped them," Lyudmila said. "Please, don't think that I justify my son, that he hit her, but this is too much."
The beating left the 17-year-old with head injuries, facial wounds, three broken ribs, a fractured nose, and internal bleeding, according to doctors.
A friend of Angelika, who also witnessed the attack, said Tunguskov had "threatened" the women but added, "I realize that they (Belik and Kazban) overreacted."
While the teen was not charged, the police initially refused to take action against Belik and Kazban either. Lyudmila claimed the authorities had been intimidated by the two suspects and she made the case public to drum up attention.
After there was outrage over the brutality of the crime, the two men were arrested and now face criminal charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm, rape, torture, and kidnapping that could see them spend up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
Authorities have confirmed that they have been detained and that their investigation into the case is still ongoing.
While Ukraine has reported a relatively low number of cases — 16,023 infections and 425 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University — the country's underprepared healthcare system has been overwhelmed, with medical workers wearing homemade protective masks and suits, and plastic bags over their shoes.
This saw many medical workers getting sick, who account for a fifth of all coronavirus cases in the country and who have repeatedly called for the government to provide more personal protective equipment to hospitals.
"I don’t believe that a single hospital in Ukraine has all it needs," said Kostyantyn Dronev, the ICU chief of a hospital in Chernivtsi, Ukraine's worst affected city. "We are short of everything."