Unknown gunmen shot and killed three men with alleged ties to the criminal underworld outside Armenia’s largest prison on Wednesday.
The dead bodies of the men, identified as Drastamat Tadevosian, Levon Ghazarian and Mesrop Nazarian, lay just several meters from the main entrance to the Nubarashen prison in Yerevan. The Armenian police said they found an assault rifle and a handgun at the scene of the shootings.
A resident of a nearby apartment block said he heard gunshots and saw three masked men fleeing the scene moments later.
The police reported no arrests in connection with the killings in the following hours. “All theories are being examined,” Ashot Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan’s police department, told reporters outside the Nubarashen jail without elaborating.
An official from the Investigative Committee, another Armenian law-enforcement body, said investigators have confiscated surveillance cameras placed on the prison gates and walls.
Some Armenian media outlets described the victims as crime figures better known with their nicknames. Karapetian said in that regard that all three men had criminal records.