Kiev, October 27, 2015
The Kiev priest who received a stab wound has given an account of how this happened to the Pravlife Ukrainian portal.
“The secular media have given distorted information on the incident in our St. Nicholas Church,” Archpriest Dimitry Plotnikov has commented. “This happened not on October 26, but on Friday October 23, at about 14.00. I returned after giving Communion to a sick woman, entered the altar to place the reserved Gifts there and was going to take off my liturgical cuffs and epitrachelion… But at the same moment one mentally ill woman ran into the church – we remembered her from her earlier visits in spring. I do not know her name but the faithful say she lives in Orositelnaya Street of the DVRZ residential area of Kiev and is roaming about like a tramp with a rucksack over her shoulders. In previous times she ran into the church, snatched large wax candles from the counter, tipped them over and made some manipulations with them. Then we with some effort turned her out of the church.
“This time she again rushed to the candles, but the seller, Anna Yurievna, managed to conceal them. But as she stooped down, a large stone flew beside her head, thrown at her by the insane woman, crying: “I will kill you!” I rushed to help Anna and chucked the possessed woman out of the church, but the latter broke away. I called the police at 14.05 and came back to church. But the demoniac woman kept running round the church, swearing and threatening. Jehovah’s Witnesses with their advertising leaflets were passing by. They stopped, praised the mentally ill woman, clapped her on the shoulder and told her she was right for her to curse the church.
“After that she once more ran into the church with a newspaper in her hand and a knife wrapped in the newspaper and attacked me. I managed to dodge and pushed her away, but she quickly rose and stabbed me again. I reacted immediately – the Lord saved me and my past experience in sambo helped me. The knife stab was directed towards chest, but I shielded myself with my arm and thus a muscle slightly above my liturgical cuff was injured.
“This was not ‘a trivial bodily injury’, as the media wrote; this was an attempted homicide. I lost up to 500 grams of blood.”
According to Fr. Dimitry, he then tried to get the mentally ill woman detained. He called the police three times. When the woman saw blood she ran away, got on the fixed-run taxi no. 526. The archpriest attempted to stop her fearing that she would do harm to people around her. He informed the taxi driver about it but the latter opened the rear door and let the possessed woman out. Fr. Dimitry followed four blocks after the demoniac, more than once calling to the Ministry of Internal Affairs agencies. But they arrived too late (though the nearest department was only three blocks away) – after half an hour, when the woman had passed out of sight and vanished within the courtyards.
