A man died of his injuries in Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv, after police said his attackers enticed him to a fake meeting with a teenage girl via a dating app, with the intention of livestreaming their assault.
Plovdiv’s historic old town area. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Klearchos Kapoutsis.
Police in Bulgaria’s second biggest city, Plovdiv, said on Thursday that they have made eight arrests over the death of a man who was lured by teenagers to a meeting with “a 17-year-old girl, posing as a 15-year-old” and then severely beaten up.
Police told a press conference that the teenagers had concocted a scheme to track, lure and then attack alleged paedophiles, and then livestream the beatings.
Their victim, who was assaulted on Tuesday at a site near Youth Hill, a location near many of the tourist sights close to the centre of Plovdiv, has been named as Georgi Kuzev.
After being assaulted, Kuzev was discovered by passers-by and taken to hospital. Nova TV said he had suffered a severe brain injury and various fractures. He died several hours later.
The incident was initially reported by media as having potentially been a homophobic attack, after other such attacks in Plovdiv in 2020, sparking outrage from LGBTQ+ rights groups.
But the announcement at Thursday’s police press conference caused a U-turn in speculation around the case.
Atanas Kalchev, mayor of Krichim, a small town near Plovdiv, said the victim was originally from Krichim.
“The case is extremely serious and is characterised by a high degree of public danger due to the cruelty of the crime committed,” Kalchev said in a statement on Wednesday before the police announced the circumstances of the attack.
“Even if the initial theories [about a homophobic attack] don’t get confirmed, this doesn’t take away from the weight of the crime,” Kalchev added.