Lithuanian man under a Czech village's guardianship storms town hall with a gun, threatens to kill staff

Police in the town of Rabí in the Klatovy region detained a 25-year-old Lithuanian citizen named Šeiris, who showed up at the local town hall with a gun and threatened to kill members of the administrative staff. Klatovy police spokesman Michal Šoun confirmed on Tuesday that the man has been charged with dangerous threats involving a weapon and disorderly conduct, and on Friday a judge ordered him held in custody.

According to investigators, the young man first pointed a handgun at an elderly employee of the office, ordered her to raise her hands, and kept his finger on the trigger. He then walked down the corridor, aimed at another woman, and threatened to shoot her too. He tucked the gun into his waistband and went outside — where, having already collected his pocket money, he flew into a rage and shouted under the office windows that he would "chop up and shred everyone at work." It later emerged that the weapon was an airsoft pistol, though the staff had no way of knowing that at the time: one woman's hands were shaking from fear, while the other nearly fainted.

A years-long conflict with the local administration

This is not the first outburst of aggression from the young man. Back in the summer of last year, in a fit of anger, he threw a rock at the mayor and threatened to kill town hall staff after being refused an increase in his pocket money — that case is still before the courts, since the defendant successfully requested a psychiatric evaluation to determine to what extent his aggression is driven by drug use. At a March hearing, Šeiris himself said he wanted to quit drugs for good: "I regret this, and I want to change. I'm not a bad person."

He came to Czechia at the age of nine with his mother, who eventually stopped taking care of him. The boy, who has a mild intellectual disability, ended up in a children's home, where he stayed until he came of age. He then spent some time living on the streets in Prague and began using drugs, before returning five years ago to his mother, who lived in the village of Bojanovice, part of the Rabí municipality.

Guardianship by the municipality — and growing aggression

"He didn't get along with his mother, so we offered him a small municipal studio flat. We didn't have the heart to leave him out on the street again," municipal mayor Miroslav Krauher said earlier. The court subsequently appointed the municipality as the young man's legal guardian — primarily to manage his finances. "We agreed to withhold rent from his disability pension and give him 200 crowns a day for pocket money. If he got more than that, he'd spend it straight away on drugs," Krauher explained.

Over time, however, the man began demanding more money. "He'd come to the office every day, sometimes up to thirty times a day. He constantly asked for more money. When he didn't get it, he'd hurl abuse at the staff. It all came to a head last summer, when his aggression crossed every line, and we genuinely started to fear him," the mayor continued.

Despite all the trouble the young man has caused the municipality, Krauher believes compulsory addiction treatment is the best solution. "As guardians, we haven't been able to free him from the substance addiction that is the root cause of his bad behavior. On top of that, he has a personality disorder, and according to a medical assessment, his developmental level is comparable to that of a 13-year-old. As a long-time user of pervitin, he simply isn't able to understand how to function in society," Krauher concluded.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz