At 22:15 on Turisticka boulevard in Ohrid, several people physically attacked a minor. One of them had a pistol. The boy's father then pointed an air rifle at the group. The police arrested - the father.

According to the Ohrid police bulletin, the incident took place on 27 August. P.S., a 47-year-old resident of Ohrid, was detained after a report that he pointed an air rifle at several people, one of them carrying a pistol, who had physically attacked his underage son on the boulevard. The police say they are taking measures to fully establish the events, after which the appropriate filing will be submitted.

The sentence sitting in the middle

"One of them with a pistol" is a phrase that slips past unnoticed in a police statement, while in fact carrying the entire weight of the incident. It means that on a main Ohrid boulevard, in tourist season, at ten in the evening, somebody pulled out a pistol during an attack on a minor.

The bulletin says who was detained. It does not say whether any of the attackers were detained, whether the pistol was seized, whether it was legal, whether the person was identified. That does not mean the police are not working on it - "measures are being taken to fully establish the events" covers everything. But what the public learns from the statement is one name and one age, and it is the father's.

What the law says, and what makes human sense

Legally, the arrest has its logic. Pointing a weapon at people, even an air rifle, is an offence the police have to respond to, whatever the circumstances. It is the court that weighs the circumstances, not the patrol.

But when the statement ends there, what remains is a picture in which the man who ran to his son is the only one in the case with a name. And that is a picture every parent in Ohrid reads one way.

The question for the Ohrid police is not why the father was arrested. The question is when we will learn what happened to the others - to those who started it, and to the one with the pistol. Because if the second half of this case never gets its own statement, then the 27 August bulletin will not be a report on an attack on a minor, but merely news about one detained Ohrid resident.