Police detained a 30-year-old man suspected of stabbing two Ukrainian citizens on a city bus in Warsaw. The man has been charged with three offences, and a court remanded him in custody for three months.
The information was released on Friday, 30 October, by the police from Bielany and Żoliborz. The attack took place in mid-October on a public transport bus. According to a police statement, the perpetrator struck the passengers multiple times, then left before officers arrived at the scene. The injured victims, with stab and cut wounds, were taken to hospital.
Hid in the Bielany Forest
Officers from Bielany quickly identified the suspect. Establishing his whereabouts proved more difficult. The Criminal Investigation Department carried out operational activities over many days. It was established that the man had been hiding and living in a forest complex in Bielany. He was detained last weekend and then placed in a police cell.
As Rzeczpospolita reports, citing earlier reports by Onet, the 30-year-old reportedly hid in an underground culvert in the forest. This detail does not appear in the police statement.
Three Charges and Recidivism
According to the statement, there are three charges. Two concern the attack on Ukrainian citizens, which allegedly occurred because of their national origin. They include:
- attempting to cause serious bodily harm,
- causing injuries resulting in impairment of a bodily function for more than seven days.
The third charge is criminal threats against another man. They were allegedly made in August 2024 at a venue on Szekspira Street. Police said the suspect failed to appear when summoned by the prosecutor’s office in this case.
He is alleged to have committed all the acts while being a repeat offender. According to police, he was serving, with interruptions, a previous prison sentence for a similar crime, imposed by the Warsaw-Żoliborz District Court, from April 2021 to February 2023.
Three-Month Custody
The alleged offences carry a penalty of 3 to 20 years in prison. At the prosecutor’s request, the court ordered temporary detention for three months. The case is supervised by the Warsaw-Żoliborz District Prosecutor’s Office. The man is a suspect, and he is presumed innocent until a final court judgment.
Police did not say which line the attack took place on, or give the exact date of the incident. They also did not provide the condition of the victims after their discharge from hospital. The victims are Ukrainian citizens, but the statement does not include their details or further details of the incident on the bus.
What It Means
For Warsaw public transport passengers, this means the perpetrator of the attack is in custody, not at large. The detention currently lasts for three months. If prosecutors deem it necessary, they may request an extension. Attributing the act to a nationality-based motive affects its classification and carries more severe liability.
Earlier, we wrote about a knife attack at the abbey in Jarosław, where the perpetrator was a Ukrainian citizen. That is a separate case.
