A video has shown the moment a man brandished the severed head of an 18-month-old in the street after murdering her.
According to Metro UK, the man identifed as Mikhail Elinsky, a 42-year-old, is said to have been released from a psychiatric institution in which he was imprisoned for killing a woman six years ago.
After his release, he attacked the toddler in her own home, before stabbing the girl’s mother – his niece – and going on a rampage in the Russian city of Astrakhan.
Disturbing footage shows him taunting officers with a knife and refusing to give himself up. He was eventually shot by officers, and died later in hospital.
His niece, Tatiana, was left with severe abdominal injuries after the stabbing, and is now grieving the loss of her daughter.
‘We were about to go out, and my daughter was sitting on her tricycle,’ she said. ‘He pulled her off, grabbed her and took her to the kitchen. He closed the door and began to cut her.
‘I tried to stop him and ran to the kitchen, but he stabbed me in the stomach with his knife.’
Local reports then claimed that Elinsky ‘ran around the street holding up her head’.
Police confirmed that they apprehended him after half an hour, and that he then died of gunshot wounds in hospital.
Elinsky first killed six years ago, when he stabbed a shop assistant to death in a frenzy in Astrakhan.
He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and a judge sent him to a high-security psychiatric hospital for treatment.
However, he was recently released as it was claimed he was ‘healthy’, local media reported.
A local police source said: ‘Nobody warned us about this man. Nobody sent us any information about him.
‘It happens in our country. There were no reports to us he was about to be released.’
