Ural Village Shaken by Teen's Arrest for Mother's Murder

“When Natasha was attacked, I was at home, but it happened so quietly, I didn’t hear a thing. A friend called to ask why there was an ambulance and police at the house, and said that Natasha had been stabbed—I was in shock.”

“Natasha moved here with her parents when this house was built, about 30 years ago. Wonderful people, you won’t hear a bad word about them. Everything was on Natasha’s shoulders. When her father died, she took care of the garden and the livestock. Her mother had bad legs—she helped her too. She raised three children herself: her son went to the war in Ukraine and went missing, she put her elder daughter through university, and the younger one is still in school. I don’t know how they will manage without her,” says a neighbor of the Kiryanov family in Gornouralsky (a village near Nizhny Tagil).

The tragedy has shaken the small village near Nizhny Tagil. In Gornouralsky, the streets don’t even have names, only the houses are numbered. The entire village consists of three blocks of two- to five-story buildings. There is a school, a sports center, and a couple of kindergartens. Those who work mostly commute to the city. And the young don’t see any prospects here and dream of moving at least to nearby Nizhny Tagil.

Everyone in the village knows about the knife attack on 47-year-old Natalya Kiryanova. A 15-year-old Anton has been charged with the woman’s death. On January 6, Natalya was at work, and then stopped by a store to buy groceries for a Christmas dinner. According to the investigation, in the stairwell the woman encountered a local troublemaker. The teen stabbed Natalya in the stomach and fled. The victim managed with difficulty to get to her apartment, where her 13-year-old daughter called an ambulance. The woman was immediately taken to the hospital and operated on, but she could not be saved—the patient died on January 12.

The suspected murderer was quickly found: he was placed under house arrest, but he removed his ankle monitor and ran away. For five days Anton was in hiding; he was detained when he went to a friend’s birthday celebration.

While local residents cursed and were afraid to leave their homes, Anton’s relatives continued to believe in him—the boy left a note in which he declared his innocence: “Dad, I’m not guilty! I didn’t do anything, I won’t sit in jail for someone else, I’d rather die.”

Natalya’s family did not come to court. The elder daughter of the deceased, Anastasia, now has a lot on her plate—she is arranging guardianship of her younger sister. Their mother raised three children alone and worked as an operator on a farm. The elder brother—missing in action in the war in Ukraine—and Nastya graduated from university and returned to her hometown, so she is the only guardian for her schoolgirl sister.

The murdered woman’s daughter told E1.RU how the teenager attacked her mother.

“My sister was home alone (waiting for mom). She was coming up the stairs from the store, and he was most likely going down. And he attacked right on the stairs. Mom made it to the apartment, and my sister called an ambulance. Mom was operated on the first day, her condition was more or less stable, but she was nauseous, vomiting, her blood pressure dropped, she had a fever. On the fifth day she got really bad, the cause of death was peritonitis.”

“We didn’t know at first that he was under house arrest, no one told us. When mom died, they started dragging him [the suspect] [to the station], and he ran away. All these days it was scary to go outside. After all, there was no motive for the attack: she didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her. There are a lot of rumors in the village about this. And there are drug addicts, maybe he was looking for something in the stairwell, or maybe not,” the daughter told E1.RU.

The teenager’s father came to the hearing with a bag of things for his son—he was sure he would be taken into custody. At the same time, Alexei himself does not believe that his child is capable of such a thing.

“I don’t know anything about what happened. They came to me, told me what happened, I sat down and couldn’t get up. My son does not admit guilt. He was at home under house arrest. Why he ran away—I don’t understand myself. He’s a good boy, played football and hockey, participated in competitions. Normal, not troubled at all,” says the teen’s father.

The schoolboy told police that at home there were fights between his father and stepmother, including with knives, however they never sought help. The stepmother denied these words.

Anton was placed in a center for troubled teenagers—at the time the boy said that he himself did not want to stay at home.

“We tried to get him back to school, but he skipped classes and wouldn’t make contact, he told me to get lost. The street started raising him. He changed a lot a year and a half ago—since he started receiving his pension money himself. He felt the money. He refused to give it to his father. He decided he was independent,” a social pedagogue said.

As a witness, a friend of the teen’s family came to the hearing. She stood up for the schoolboy.

“Everyone writes that he’s a monster, a murderer who kept everyone in fear. Nonsense! A normal boy! His guilt still has to be proven. Have you seen him? A child, 5 feet (approximately 1.5 meters) tall!” declared Tatyana, an acquaintance of the boy’s family.

The teenager who attacked Natalya lives on the other end of the village. A neighbor of the schoolboy confessed to E1.RU that he was always polite, but he had had problems with the law before. In December he was wanted after escaping from a juvenile correctional center. The boy ended up there because of theft.

A neighbor blames the tragedy on the schoolboy’s father, who regularly drinks. Alexei—the accused’s father—has been married three times: seven children from his first wife were taken to an orphanage. Then he got together with Tatyana—Anton and his younger sister were born. The teenager’s mother also had alcohol problems. Doctors forbade her to drink, but the woman died from liver problems when her son was about four years old. The younger girl was taken by her grandmother. And the boy stayed with his father, who until the age of 14 received his son’s survivor’s pension.

The teen’s father, after the death of his first wife, moved in with another woman. Neighbors call the family troubled.

“To me, the boy was positive. Whatever you ask—he’ll do it, he’s polite. When I’m walking in the stairwell, he always waits, holds the door. Maybe somewhere with friends he showed his bad side, but I never noticed that about him,” said Nina, a neighbor of the boy accused of attempted murder.

Neighbors even felt sorry for the child with a difficult fate.

“He never saw affection since childhood. No toys, nothing. That’s why he started stealing from stores as a child. They even caught him when he was little. Of course, what kind of psyche will you have if you grow up like that,” a neighbor is convinced.

The attack on Natalya was not the first recently in the small village. Before the New Year, teenagers beat up a boy with a mental disability. His mother said that Anton had assembled a whole gang.

“He walked around the village with his buddies like a leader. Five or six people, I never counted them because they are animals. They made faces, showed off. They attacked my son. His buddies held my son, and he beat him,” said Svetlana, the mother of the disabled boy who was attacked.

The teenager attacked the disabled boy several times, his mother says. He beat him badly in December.

“He shoved him in the woods between pipes, his back and neck—everything cracked. He choked him with a hood. My son came home crying, he was afraid of him,” the boy’s mother says.

On January 21, the Suburban District Court of Nizhny Tagil arrested the teenager for one month and 16 days. While the investigation is ongoing, Anton will remain in custody. In the near future, law enforcement will determine whether the teenager is sane. In the meantime, relatives plan to find evidence of his innocence. And the residents of Gornouralsky will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

We conducted a live broadcast from the courthouse. Anton has been described as a cruel and evil teenager, but the boy’s father does not believe he is guilty. It also became known that before escaping, the teenager left a note for his relatives, stating that he did not commit the murder.

All news about this tragedy we are collecting in a special section.