Three teenage boys hang themselves after being caught for stealing

The boys decided to steal three rabbits just to entertain themselves 

Artyom Kislitsin was one of the three young boys, who hung themselves in a barn on the outskirts of a small village of Sernur, the Mariy-El republic of Russia. Police officers believe that the boys committed collective suicide when they confessed that they had stolen three rabbits.

Fifteen-year-old boy Vladimir Romanov was a student of a professional school, Artyom Kislitsin was a ninth-grader, and Sergei Bogdanov was an eighth-grader of a secondary school. The three boys were not perfect kids: they would often steal little things from their friends. One day they were caught for stealing a motorbike.

About two weeks ago the boys joined their efforts again to steal three rabbits from their fellow-villagers. The boys did not need the animals; they simply decided to go on a risky adventure just to get themselves busy with something. The police found the thieves two weeks later. Officers detained the three boys and took them to a police station. The police officers said that no one was beating the boys when they were being interrogated. The boys' relatives, however, insist on the opposite. When the police released the boys, they told them to come to the station with their parents the next day.

No one can say now what the boys were thinking about after the interrogation. They were probably afraid of their parents' anger, or they feared to be jailed in a children's colony. At first they wanted to run away and hide – the police found three backpacks full of their things. The day before the “judgment day” the three boys gathered in the barn, which belonged to Vladimir Romanov's parents. The barn was a very popular place of theirs – parents knew that their sons could sit up late there. That is why no one even noticed that the boys were absent for a very long time.

Artyom and Sergei were the first to hang themselves. When it was over, Vladimir climbed up to the ceiling, cut the ropes and carefully put his friends' bodies on the floor. Then he put the noose around his neck too. 

Specialists of forensic medicine said that the three boys committed suicide because of the stressful situation that they found themselves in. Being teenage young boys, they could not cope with the shame of being caught for stealing. 

On the photo: Artyom Kislitsin (left) and his younger brother (right)