Wednesday afternoon, 13:50, Dracevska Street in Skopje. Guests were leaving a hospitality venue. At that moment, from a moving vehicle, a 26-year-old from Skopje pulled out a pistol and fired several rounds into the air.

Police intervened immediately and detained the suspect, identified by the initials L.R. His pistol was seized and he was held at a police station. Once the case is fully documented and in coordination with the public prosecutor, criminal charges will be filed against him under Article 396 of the Criminal Code.

The Interior Ministry statement gives no information on whether anyone was injured or any property damaged.

„Into the air” is not a mitigating circumstance

The phrase that always shows up in statements like this is „fired into the air”, and it always sounds as if it lessens the seriousness of the act. It does not. A bullet fired upward does not disappear - it comes back down, fast enough to kill, and nobody shooting into the air knows where it will land.

This happened in the middle of the day, in a city, in front of people leaving a tavern. Not in an empty field, not at night, not at a wedding in a back yard - on the street, mid-afternoon, next to customers.

The man who fired chose that. He was not provoked according to any statement, he was not defending himself - he pulled a pistol out of a moving car and shot while people were walking past him.

The police, it should be said, reacted quickly and arrested him the same day, with the weapon seized. That is the part of the system that worked.

The question that remains is not about him, but about the pistol: how many like it are in circulation, and how many of them will turn up on a street the next time someone decides the afternoon calls for a bullet.