Rabí, Czechia: man gets six months for airsoft gun threats

A court has sentenced a Rabí resident to six months in prison for threatening town hall employees with an airsoft pistol. The verdict is not yet final. The man must also pay each of the two women 10,000 crowns in compensation for non-material damage and, after serving his sentence, undergo protective treatment for drug addiction.

How he threatened the employees

Judge Petr Sperk sent the convicted man behind bars for threatening the women with a firearm inside the town hall itself: he rushed at them with an airsoft pistol in his hand. The women did not know the weapon was fake and were so frightened that one's hands shook, while the other felt faint with fear and nearly lost consciousness.

According to the state prosecutor, he first aimed the short-barreled weapon at an elderly employee, ordered her to raise her hands and kept his finger on the trigger. Then, across the corridor, he pointed the pistol at another woman and threatened to shoot her. He then tucked the pistol into his waistband and left. Later, outside under the office windows, after collecting his pocket money, he flew into a rage and shouted that he would hack up everyone in the town hall.

Guardianship and addiction

The municipality is the man's guardian and has for four years been paying him 200 crowns a day for living expenses out of his disability pension. He was also given housing in a municipal studio apartment. But the young man responds with aggression: earlier he received a suspended sentence for threatening to kill employees, promising to burn down the town hall and throwing a stone at the mayor. He constantly demands higher pocket money and immediately spends it on drugs.

He came to Czechia at the age of nine with his mother. She eventually lost interest in him, and the boy, who has a mild intellectual disability, ended up in a children's home, where he lived until adulthood. For a while he wandered the streets of Prague and began using drugs, and five years ago he returned to his mother, who then lived in the village of Bojanovice, which is part of Rabí.

The court partially stripped him of legal capacity and appointed the municipality as his guardian, mainly to manage his finances. “We agreed that we would withhold housing costs from his disability pension and give him 200 crowns of pocket money every day. If he got more, he would spend it all on drugs right away,” Rabí mayor Miroslav Krauher said earlier.

The mayor considers addiction treatment the best solution. “As guardians, we were unable to free him from the dependence on substances that is the cause of his bad behavior. On top of that, he has a personality disorder, and according to the medical report he is at the level of a 13-year-old child. As a long-term methamphetamine user, he is unable to understand how to behave in society,” Krauher added.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz