Savage Murder of Teen Shocks Serbia

Serbia's Interior Minister said he regretted that the country had abolished the death penalty following the discovery of the body of a teenage girl who had apparently been murdered in a particularly brutal fashion.

Serbian police on Wednesday arrested Dragan Djuric, a 34-year-old butcher from the Belgrade neighbourhood of Surcin, for the murder of Tijana Juric.

The suspect later took police to a shallow grave on a dump near the town of Sombor in northern Serbia, where the body of the 15-year-old girl from the Bajmok, some 30km from Sombor, was found.

Nebojsa Stefanovic, the Interior Minister, said that on the night of the murder Djuric was visiting Bajmok.

Djuric allegedly hit Tijana with his car, then got out and start hitting her when she started calling for help, and eventually dragging her into his car. He then drove the girl to an empty field and killed her.

Reconstruction of the night when Tijana went missing revealed that the girl was alone for only seven minutes.

On the evening of her abduction, Tijana was with her friends at a sport tournament in Bajmok. Around midnight, along with two friends, she started walking home, but decided to return to the sports field to give back a shirt she had borrowed from a friend.

She went back the same way alone. About 25 minutes later, she met a few friends and moved on to the sports field.

At about the same time, her friends called the boy to whom Tijana was supposed to return shirt. The boy started walking into her direction in order to meet her.

However, some 100 metres from the sports field, he founds Tijana’s training shoe and a nail. The police have confirmed that this is the spot where she was hit by the car.

“From the moment she was last seen...

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