The residents of a Russian apartment block can finally sleep soundly after authorities arrested their neighbor who terrorized them with sounds of horse neighs for a year and a half.
Yury Kondratyev, 46, initially started blaring classical music, then switched to Rammstein before settling on neighing horses in retaliation to what he called his loud neighbors. Residents told local media in Nizhny Novgorod 420 kilometers east of Moscow that they had exhausted every legal recourse to get him to turn off the neighing.
“I listen to music and horse sounds in my apartment. I also knock on the walls all night,” residents read out a note that Kondratyev allegedly sent his neighbors this fall.
“I’ll keep doing so and I don’t care if someone doesn’t like it,” the note continues.
A Nizhny Novgorod court ordered Friday to place Kondratyev under arrest on charges of torturing two or more people, Interfax reported. The report did not identify Kondratyev by name.
If found guilty, he faces between three and seven years in prison.
This is the first criminal case opened in Russia on the basis of mental suffering inflicted on neighbors, the Nizhny Novgorod region’s police department told Interfax.
It said the suspect who was placed in custody had started blaring the sounds of neighing horses in April 2018.
News reports said police issued at least three citations to Kondratyev in 2019 and a court fined him 5,000 rubles ($80), which he apparently did not pay.
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