A man locked up for the night in a Kaliningrad police station died from hot water burns. Was it negligence, or was it torture?

On October 20, Kaliningrad soccer player Ivan Vshivkov died in a local hospital. He was checked into the facility with severe burns after being arrested earlier that night: Police officers said that Vshivkov had broken open a radiator in a police holding cell, releasing hot water that covered his body. However, the athlete’s relatives said they did not believe the police’s version of events. We summarized what has been reported so far about Vshivkov’s death and the questions that remain unanswered.

What we know about Ivan Vshivkov’s arrest and his sudden death

On the evening of October 19, the 36-year-old Vshivkov was celebrating his brother-in-law’s birthday in Kaliningrad. Both men were arrested when they went out to a nearby store, but only Vshivkov was taken in to a police station. He arrived there at 11:20 PM. Officers then called Vshivkov’s mother, Olga, to tell her that they would be keeping her son overnight because he was behaving inappropriately. The police later clarified that they had arrested the soccer player for disorderly conduct. Representatives of the local investigative committee added that Vshivkov appeared to have been intoxicated, a suggestion that the athlete’s mother did not deny.

Vshivkov was placed in a holding cell. A security camera recording published on the anonymous Telegram channel Siloviki indicates that at about 1:00 AM, the soccer player began fighting with his cellmate. Because there is no sound in the recording, the cause of the conflict remains unclear. Police officers separated the two arrestees and took Vshivkov away to a different cell, which also contained at least one other individual. There, he shouted something in the direction of the door and began kicking it repeatedly. At 1:31 AM, Vshivkov noticed a security camera installed above the door and waved a plastic water bottle at it. Investigators claim that he subsequently broke the camera.

At 3:30 AM, two hours after the security camera stopped recording, an ambulance was called to the police station. The doctors in the ambulance team diagnosed Vshivkov with burns on approximately 70 percent of his body. He was checked into a hospital at 4:02, and seven hours later, according to Siloviki, he was pronounced dead from traumatic shock and burns caused by a hot liquid. In the soccer player’s death certificate, doctors indicated that police claimed Vshivkov had broken open a radiator and released a stream of hot water.

Three days after Vshivkov’s death, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal negligence case, arguing that police officers had not adequately provided for their arrestee’s safety. State Duma Deputy Sergei Shargunov also submitted a complaint to prosecutors asking for an investigation of the athlete’s death. Nonetheless, as soon as investigators began pursuing the case, they emphasized that Vshivkov had not been handcuffed to the radiator as his family members had suggested. Photographs from the site of the water spill show that the protective grate in front of the radiator was partially torn away from the wall and that the plastic tubing behind that gap, which led from the wall to the radiator, was broken.

What we still don’t know about the incident

How can water from a radiator burn a person to death?

The water temperature in the radiator in question was at least 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit). Water of that temperature can burn through human skin completely in five seconds, causing injuries that would match the third-degree burns noted on Vshivkov’s death certificate. Olga Vshivkova, the soccer player’s mother, believes that fact may mean her son was beaten and left unconscious before the hot water was poured over him. Otherwise, she has argued, he would have instinctively jumped away from the water.

While most comparable cells have grating or bars on their doors, this cell was solid on all sides. As a result, the water that poured out of the radiator flooded the room to a height of 30 centimeters (11.8 inches). However, local Social Monitoring Commission member Alexander Vavilov noted that even in that drastic situation, Vshivkov could have jumped onto the cot in the cell to prevent life-threatening burns.

It is not known how long Vshivkov remained in the cell once the radiator was broken. Police officers said that “first aid was immediately provided to the victim” but did not specify how long it took to turn off the hot water or whether any of the officers who provided first aid were also burned.

Could Vshivkov really have been handcuffed to the radiator?

Suspicions on this count among the athlete’s family members have spread widely in the Russian media. It’s not an unlikely hypothesis in part because a similar incident took place a year ago in Yakutia. In that case, an arrestee died after a police officer handcuffed him to a heating tube that then broke.

Nonetheless, the prison monitor Vavilov, who inspected the police cell where Vshivkov was held, gave two arguments against the proposition that the athlete had been handcuffed. First, he said, the radiator was located behind a grate, and it would have been very difficult to push handcuffs behind the grate toward the radiator. The metal cot attached to the floor nearby would have presented a far more convenient option for a police officer looking to handcuff Vshivkov in place. Police officers have insisted that they did not put handcuffs on Vshivkov at all or use any other special restraining methods.

Why was Vshivkov left alone in the cell?

Video recordings show that there was one other person in the cell where Vshivkov was burned. That person’s legs are visible on a cot in the lower right-hand side of the video’s frame. The anonymous cellmate later told Vshivkov’s sister Alexandra that he was removed from the cell once Vshivkov broke the security camera above the door. That left the soccer player alone in a cell with a malfunctioning security camera and a solid, locked door.

Could the police have tortured Vshivkov?

Police officers in Russia regularly torture the individuals they arrest. Following this latest incident in Kaliningrad, legal journalist Dmitry Tkachev pointed out several examples of cases in which police have used hot water to torture those under their charge. Vshivkov’s mother also noted after examining her son’s body that his ears were blue, which the medics who spoke with her said might be a sign that Vshivkov was beaten.

Is it even possible for someone to die while under arrest without the police being at fault?

Yes; there have also been cases in Russia that match this description. For example, during a June 16 opposition protest in Moscow, a woman named Vera Pleshakova gave a speech saying that her son had been beaten in a police station, and he had subsequently died from his wounds in a hospital. However, human rights advocates working for the Committee Against Torture later said they had investigated the death of Pleshakova’s son and found that he had most likely simply fallen in his cell and hit the back of his head. The human rights group could only make that claim in Pleshakova’s case because the entire incident had been captured on video.