Investigation under way after Dukanchik shooting; minister says one suspect is serving prison time

An intensive police investigation is under way after a 26-year-old man was shot dead on the night of the incident in the Dukanchik neighbourhood of Skopje, Minister of Internal Affairs Panche Toshkovski said.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the shooting occurred at 23:30 while a group of five men were standing near the intersection of Sveti Prohor Pchinski and Vojdan Chernodrinski streets. Two people on a motorcycle approached and opened fire, then fled the scene. One of the bullets struck 26-year-old A.M. from Skopje; he was taken by ambulance to the Clinical Centre in Skopje and later died.

Toshkovski told Kanal 5’s Vesti Plus that police have initial information about the perpetrators and that one of the persons involved is already serving a prison sentence. He said investigators have secured relevant evidence and that the Ministry, together with the Public Prosecutor's Office, will fully examine the case.

"At this moment I could not officially single out the motives. I can only emphasize that the criminal case is being worked on intensively. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has initial information about the perpetrators. It has secured appropriate evidence as to who the perpetrators are, so I hope that as quickly as possible we will secure them and they will be subject to criminal prosecution, as many others were in the recent period, having committed a large number of crimes over the past years. And now we have such a case," Toshkovski said.

The minister also flagged concerns about influences stemming from the penitentiary system, saying he had recently raised the issue at a conference with the OSCE and several foreign diplomats in the country, including the US ambassador. He added that early indications do not point to a territorial clash between organized criminal groups but to other motives, and that it is too soon to release further details publicly.

While Toshkovski noted a marked decrease in violent crimes linked to organized criminal groups in recent years, he warned that incidents like this remain worrying from a security and policing perspective.

Photo: press material from the event