A 37-year-old man with more than 25 final convictions has been charged with intentionally killing a 33-year-old man with a knife in Sliven, as a dangerous repeat offender. Police and the regional prosecutor's office announced the charge at a briefing.
The victim was stabbed on Wednesday, 4 November, in the early afternoon at a private home in a villa area east of the town. The attacker left the scene but was arrested that same evening.
The previous development: Young man stabbed to death in Sliven, police search for attacker
At about 2pm, the emergency department of the regional hospital called police about a man with a stab wound. Officers who arrived found he had died. The victim has no criminal record.
The two men had known each other for years and were close friends, said chief inspector Boris Borisov, head of the Sliven district police department. He said the most likely motive so far is a money dispute. Prosecutors also say the evidence points to a financial motive.
A witness named the suspect early in the investigation. Police at once set up checkpoints on the roads out of Sliven and followed his trail. At about 10pm they found him at a private home in a village near the town. He did not resist. Officers from the tactical unit of the regional police directorate (ODMVR) also took part in the operation.
"We worked on hot leads. We knew almost his every move – where he was going, which people he was meeting and how he was travelling," Borisov said. He added that the suspect is very cunning, and that his many spells in prison made him harder to catch.
The accused, who has the initials I.R., left prison on 13 October after serving his last sentence. Four of his convictions date from when he was a minor. He got 6 years in prison for kidnapping, 2 years and 6 months for robbery, and 1 year and 10 months for other crimes. He also has convictions for embezzlement, spreading fake banknotes and theft.
Some of his sentences have been merged into one. The law allows this when a person committed several crimes before a verdict became final for any of them. Other convictions came from plea deals between the prosecutor's office, the accused and his lawyer, which the court approved.
He is charged under Article 116, paragraph 1, point 12, first alternative, read with Articles 115 and 29, paragraph 1, letters "a" and "b" of the Criminal Code. The crime carries 10 to 20 years in prison, life in prison, or life without commutation.
A prosecutor ordered the man held for 72 hours. Prosecutor Vanya Beleva, spokeswoman for the Sliven regional prosecutor's office, said his many convictions create a real risk that he will commit another crime or go into hiding. For that reason, prosecutors will ask the court to keep him in custody.
Blood samples were taken from the suspect to check whether he was on drugs at the time of the killing. It is not yet possible to say for sure whether he had accomplices, and the charge is for an act he carried out alone.
Prosecutors also commented on an earlier case from 2022 that has been shown on social media as an attempted murder. The Sliven district prosecutor's office first opened a pre-trial case for minor bodily harm and sent it to the regional office, which had jurisdiction. The supervising prosecutor judged, based on a forensic medical report and other evidence, that there was no sign of attempted murder. The case was sent back to the district prosecutor's office and taken to court.