A police detective outside Moscow is murdered while leaving her home. Just a few months earlier, somebody set fire to her car.

Interior Ministry detective Evgeniya Shishkina was murdered outside her home in the town of Arkhangelskoye. An unidentified man shot her as she was leaving her apartment building and walking toward the parking lot, on her way to work. Shishkina died from a gunshot to the neck; her body was later discovered by her husband. Initial reports claimed that the killer shot her twice and then stabbed Shishkina in the neck and head, but investigators later clarified that they recovered just a single bullet and one bullet casing at the scene of the crime.

Shishkina was a lieutenant colonel in the police. A career officer, she joined the Interior Ministry in 1991, rising from inspector in the Moscow Railway Special Transport Department to senior detective in the Major Cases Division. According to the tabloid Mash, Shishkina has recently been investigating several high-profile cases related to fraud and economic crimes.

Shishkina’s killing is being investigated as a fatal attack on a law enforcement officer. Police initially opened a straightforward murder case, but the charges were revised hours later, after investigators announced that there is “sufficient evidence” to suggest that Shishkina was killed because of her work as a detective. Officials have also added arms trafficking charges. The case has been transferred to the Main Investigations Directorate of the Moscow region’s Investigative Committee. According to the news agency Vesti, Shishkina’s murder might be connected to an investigation related to the drug trade.

Several months ago, someone set fire to Shishkina’s Lexus. Investigators never identified the assailants, but Mash calls the incident an “attempted murder”: Shishkina allegedly detained an innocent man and then proceeded to extort money from him, when working a case involving the transportation of a large batch of illegal drugs. The man’s relatives were reportedly suspected of the arson attack on Shishkina’s Lexus. According to the newspaper Kommersant, the same relatives appealed to the district attorney and the local police about Shishkina, but internal investigators determined that she did not abuse her authority.

Text by Grigory Levchenko, translation by Kevin Rothrock