Slovak Police say shooting incident not racially motivated, gunmen wanted sex and didn't get it

Slovak media are reporting that the shooting incident involving three men firing a submachine gun at the home of a Romani family in the Varguľa settlement in the town of Pohronská Polhora apparently had neither an extremist nor a racist subtext. According to the Banská Bystrica Regional Police Director, Štefan Šurek, the assailants were drunk and drove to the settlement because they wanted sex with local Romani women.

When the men failed to convince anybody to have sex with them, they began to fire their weapon. “If anybody has been speculating about any other motive, at this phase we have ruled out an extremist or racial motivation or subtext… It seems these guys were interested in sex with girls,” the police director told the press on 12 October.

According to police, that version of events is supported by the fact that interrogations of approximately 80 eyewitnesses, including settlement residents, did not involve testimony about any of the shooters verbalizing threats against Romani people or abusing them in a racist, vulgar way. When the men fired a submachine gun from their car at the single-family home, the bullets passed through the wooden fence and one window of the house.

Nobody was physically harmed during the incident. The father of the family said that fortunately the children were already in bed at that time after supper.