As we already reported, a horrible event took place yesterday in Split and shook Croatia – one young man committed a triple murder in the middle of the day, in the city’s centre.
Croatia has been and remains to be a very safe country. That’s one of the reasons why tragedies like this capture the attention of its public, as this is not something we often see. Many questions about the murder, the motives, the victims and the other circumstances have surfaced since yesterday, so the Split-Dalmatia Police department organised a press conference today, to try to answer some of those questions. Dražen Vitez, Head of the police department, Marko Srdarević, his deputy, and Ante Marković, head of the crime investigation unit within the department, were all present at the conference.
It took the police less than 3 hours to catch the killer, Filip Zavadlav, a 22-year-old sailor from Split. They thanked the citizens that helped with the search for the killer and who obeyed their orders. They confirmed that some of the bullets coming out of Zavadlav’s AK-47 hit cars with civilians inside, but luckily he didn’t hurt anyone other than his intended victims. The police couldn’t confirm that the killer had planned to kill three more people, although they did confirm that they had apprehended one person, who was Zavadlav’s potential target as well.
While the police wouldn’t speculate on his motive, social media and the Croatian media is certain that the murders were Zavadlav’s reaction to the unbearable situation his family has been put into. The story that is making the rounds in Croatia is that one of Zavadlav’s brothers was addicted to drugs, that he owed some money to his dealers (and those were the yesterday’s victims) and that they had been abusing the family, coming to their home and threatening them if they’re not paid back what they were owed. Filip Zavadlav was supposedly out sailing for most of that period but has decided to put a stop to the abuse of his family yesterday. In December he was in Split and he was interviewed by Nova TV about the situation with Hajduk, index.hr reports.
The victims were Marino Paić, Marin Boban and Jurica Torlak. Paić and Boban died right away, while Torlak fought for his life but died later in the hospital. Both Paić and Torlak have a long history with the police, having been charged with dozens of various crimes in the past. Torlak has spent some time in prison before, because in 2004, when he was 22, he hit a girl in a pedestrian zone in front of a school with his motorcycle, killing her and then fleeing the scene. Soon after he was released from prison, in 2008, he was almost killed as he got involved in a fight between his friend and another man, who wanted the 30-year old friend to stop “dating” his then 16-year old daughter.
Right after most of the circumstances of the triple murder were revealed, a large portion of the Croatian public decided to side with the killer, stating that he wouldn’t have been forced to do what he did if the police and other law enforcement bodies has done what they were supposed to do and removed the violent criminals (which is how the public sees yesterday’s victims) from the streets, thus protecting Zavadlav’s family.
Several Facebook groups have been made (currently, the largest one has around 4.5 thousand members) supporting Filip, calling him a hero, taking a strong stand against drugs and the drug dealers and calling out the police for allowing the known drug dealers to walk the streets and torment families.
A triple murder such as this one is something Croats haven’t seen before, so we’re sure more will be written and said about this in the coming weeks. We’ll continue to follow the story as well.
