A Ukrainian has been arrested in the Leningrad region for setting fire to a village house with a 77-year-old pensioner.

In the Leningrad region, the Luga City Court arrested for two months 28-year-old Ukrainian citizen Mikhailo Gusto, accused of deliberate arson, which through negligence resulted in the death of a 77-year-old resident of house No. 13 in the village of Gorodets, reports the regional online publication 47news.

According to him, a criminal case into the woman’s death was opened on May 7 under Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code (deliberate destruction or damage to property, resulting in the death of a person through negligence and other grave consequences). They detained him right during the fire. According to investigators, the man surrounded the village house with dry branches and set fire to it, in which his elderly owner Tamara Kapitonova was staying.

Most likely, the woman was sleeping at the time of the arson, the publication writes. Eyewitnesses saw her running out of the house, engulfed in flames.

“They say that Tamara Ivanovna returned to the burning house to get documents, and when she came out, her grandson extinguished it with his jacket. He arrived in time from the neighboring village of Retyun after a call from neighbors,” the victim’s daughter-in-law Svetlana told 47news.

As a result, the pensioner received burns to her respiratory organs and 80% of her skin. The injured pensioner was first taken to the Luga Central District Hospital, and then transferred to the burn center in Toksovo. According to relatives, doctors are pessimistic. “They say you need to prepare for the worst,” the victim’s daughter-in-law told 47news.

According to preliminary data, the arrested Ukrainian covered the house, summer kitchen, woodshed, barn and garage with dry grass and set it on fire. Neighbors came running and found him sitting in front of a separate fire. At the same time, the man immediately admitted to setting the fire and said that house No. 13 was “a bad and uninhabited dwelling,” and he also “plays some kind of computer game.”

They plan to schedule a psychiatric examination for the arrested person, the prosecutor’s office told 47news. The man had not been seen in Gorodets before, but during the day he was spotted on the street by the victim’s grandson, Boris, 47news clarifies. “We were repairing a car at my grandmother’s site. I went to the stall for cigarettes. I see a guy walking, muttering and waving his arms. I also thought he was strange,” Boris told the publication.

According to 47news, the victim worked as a post office manager in the village of Retyuni until her retirement, where she worked for many years. About the detainee, the publication, citing the prosecutor’s office, reports that he “apparently came from the western part of Ukraine.” The police have not yet commented on the case.