FROM SMILING "UNCLE" TO BLOODY BEAST: Tihomir massacred grandmother in front of 3-year-old in Belgrade

There are crimes that cannot be described simply by words such as, "attack" or "robbery". What happened on Saturday, in broad daylight, on the staircase of a building in Arsenija Carnojevica Boulevard in Belgrade, surpasses many police cases. It is a story about cruelty that knows no bounds and about a childhood that was forever wounded before the eyes of those who were supposed to protect it.

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Smile that was hiding hell

That Saturday afternoon, 68-year-old S.C. and her three-year-old grandson were returning from a walk. At the entrance to the building, a man stepped behind them. A stranger. Likely, in that manner customary to us, she quietly wished a "good day" to a person she came across in her building.

Surveillance camera footage revealed the most gruesome detail, the attacker, Tihomir Krstic (46), smiling back at her. It was, as his own neighbors are saying, a psychopathic, "kind" smile of a man who maintained a mask of normality in one hand and a knife ready to plunge into the elderly woman in the other.

Blood on concrete and stunned child

As soon as they stepped onto the staircase, the smile disappeared. Only the beast remained. While the three-year-old boy was screaming, Krstic was frantically stabbing his grandmother. Seven times. Four wounds to one shoulder, three landing against a shoulder blade. The blows were so strong that they broke bones, ribs and the shoulder blade.

When the woman fell, hitting her head on the concrete, he snatched her bag and ran away. What was left was a blood-soaked staircase and a three-year-old child who now in complete silence and shock, stood next to his grandmother who was not moving. That scene that depicts defeat of our society.

Chilling admission

The police chase for the suspect lasted for hours. Krstic, who was released from the Zabela prison only two months ago, was hiding in an apartment in the suburban Belgrade municipality of Rakovica along with his girlfriend.

When the special police finally handcuffed him at a bus stop, and when one of them asked, "What have you done, man?", he showed no remorse. All he said was, "I'm a drug addict and HIV positive."

For him, it was just another day in a series of criminal acts he has been committing, after he had robbed a local bakery just a few days earlier. For the family of his victim, it was the beginning of hell that has no end.

Battle that never ends

While the doctors at the Emergency Center are fighting to repair the seven wounds suffered by the victim, and heal her punctured lungs, the family is fighting yet another battle, the one for the little boy's mental well-being.

Tihomir Krstic is behind bars, but the weight of this crime hangs over Belgrade. It wasn't a struggle over a bag. It was an attack on all that we consider humane.

The seven wounds may heal, but the image of a bleeding grandmother and a smiling "uncle", swinging a knife at her, could remain forever etched in the mind of the three-year-old.

(Telegraf.rs)