2024-07-28 06:40:33
Her children will continue to live with their mother’s alleged killer for an unknown number of years
Almost at the end of the judicial investigation, the case for the murder of 20-year-old Krasimira Kukovska from the village of Begovo in Kaloyanovsk has been closed and will have to start over. Kukovska was fatally shot on September 11, 2020, and the father of her two daughters, Lyubomir Petrov, is on trial for this. Then Danimira was 2 years old, and Melanie – a few months old, they are now 6 and 4, and in the last 2 years, since Petrov was released from custody, they have been living with the alleged murderer of their mother. The girls are private prosecutors against their father, they also have civil claims against him, but at this stage there is no option for anyone else to take care of them. Their mother’s parents died in an accident, but she has living grandparents – Delka and Kolyo Kolevi, who want the girls to live with them, they filed a lawsuit for the rights, but it was suspended until the completion of the criminal proceedings for the murder. With its subsequent termination and start from the first phase of the process, this means a postponement of another unclear number of years.
The case started in 2022 in the District Court in Plovdiv and was terminated because prosecutor Anelia Trifonova had participated in the investigative experiment, which raised doubts about her impartiality. In the following year, it began with another accuser – Galina Andreeva-Mincheva, who also charged Petrov with looting because he had withdrawn BGN 4,000 from his wife’s card after her death. The court returned the case to the prosecutor’s office so that the materials on the two charges in different proceedings. Thus, there was a third beginning of the murder trial, which, at the insistence of Lubomir Petrov’s lawyers, takes place behind closed doors. All the witnesses have already been questioned, the expert reports have been accepted, and the hearing of two additional expert opinions and the explanations of Lubomir Petrov, if he wishes to speak, remained. This was supposed to take place on September 30 of this year, but with her order of July 24, Judge-Rapporteur Rozaliya Sheitanova recused herself. By law, there is a requirement for immutability of the composition, and the junior judge in it already works in the District Court. Separately, one of the jurors also withdrew, who had first won a competition in the NRA, and then for an investigative police officer – a position incompatible with the position of a member of a judicial panel. Before classifying him for work in the police, however, Judge Sheitanova made efforts to ensure his participation in the case, which, according to her, can be taken as a form of some kind of bias. That is why it is taken away.
She is also the head of the court, so the case will be reported to the deputy president, who will appoint a new reporter.