Six men, one family and two underage children inside the house. On the night of 24 July, around 21:20, something happened in the village of Saraj near Strumica that the police reports call „violence” - and anyone who reads the list of initials knows it was a great deal more than that.

According to police, the suspects forced their way into the home of K.Gj. and physically assaulted K.Gj., Z.Gj., R.Gj., V.Gj., B.M., B.Gj. and two minors. Several sustained bodily injuries. Two of the attackers, investigators say, tried to take R.Gj. out of the house against her will, which is why they face a charge of unlawful deprivation of liberty on top of the violence.

Criminal complaints were filed against B.D. (22), T.J. (49), S.D. (47), V.M. (36), G.T. (42) and M.T. (21), all from the neighbouring village of Prosenikovo. Six people, three generations, from twenty-one to forty-nine years old. This is not one man losing his temper. This is an organised group that knew where it was going and who it was going for.

When the police showed up, the story did not end. One of the suspects, B.D., physically attacked two police officers, which earned him a third complaint - assaulting an official in the performance of security duties. When someone takes a swing at a uniformed officer, the question of how much he feared the police beforehand answers itself.

The hardest detail comes last. The head of the household, K.Gj., stepped out onto his terrace and fired two shots into the air with a hunting rifle. Not to kill anyone - to be heard. In a village, at 21:20, with six men inside his house, he worked out that the fastest way to get help was to shoot at the sky. And once the case is fully documented, the authorities announce, a complaint will be filed against him too.

Formally that is correct - unauthorised use of a firearm is an offence. But there is a gap between what is formally correct and what is just, and that gap is filled by the prosecution, not by a police report. The question still hanging is a different one: how long passed between the first blow and the arrival of the police, and why a man in his own home with children inside has to fire a rifle to shorten that minute.

All the suspects are being held at the Strumica police station and the public prosecutor has been notified. The investigation continues. It will show whether this was a spontaneous clash between two villages or something that had been smouldering for a while - and whether anyone had reported threats earlier that were left in a drawer.