– He pulled out the children and started pointing them at me. I only saw the barrel. He started asking, “where is he?” – Anna recalls the tragic events. After her former partner Dawid M. caused a collision with her car, he stopped on the roadside and started shooting at the passengers – the woman, her new partner and her two children. According to Ms. Anna's account, it was not the first time that she feared for her health and life because of him. In “Attention!” TVN – previously unknown behind-the-scenes of the tragedy that took place near Łódź.
It all happened on Saturday, September 28 in the evening, on a road in Lubowidza near Łódź.
39-year-old Anna, her partner Adam and their two children were driving home when a speeding Mercedes suddenly appeared behind them. Its driver began to deliberately hit the rear of Anna's Toyota with the front of the car. When he did it for the third time, the car rolled over and fell into a ditch, landing on its roof.
Then the Mercedes driver also stopped and got out of the car. It was Dawid M., the woman's former partner. The man suddenly started shooting at the car.
– He came towards us and kept shooting. I started screaming that Jasio, our common child, was in the car. At that moment he shot at the window next to Jaś. He kicked the window with his foot and said: “Jasio, leave.” Jasio asked if he was sure he wasn't going to kill him. He said no. He pulled it out. At that moment, my daughter stuck her head out the window and also asked if he would kill her, Anna recalls.
As he says in an interview with “Uwaga!” TVN, Dawid M. then pulled the girl out of the car and said that he would kill her mother and her partner.
– He pulled out the children and started pointing them at me. I only saw the barrel. He started asking, “where is he?” He realized that Adam was not in the car because Adam went out through the open door and wanted to approach Dawid from behind – he says. According to her, when Adam was already in close proximity to the attacker, he noticed. Then the woman's partner started running away.
“I took the children and we started running as fast as we could, into the thickest thicket.”
When Adam was running away from Dawid M., Anna's friend arrived with her boyfriend.
– The first thing I thought was that they had collided with some moose. I managed to open the door and Ania started telling me to call the police because Dawid was shooting at Adam – says Karolina. – We were convinced that he would soon run after us. And we started running away in panic, he adds.
– I took the children and we started running as fast as we could into the largest thicket in the forest to hide there. So we wouldn't be visible when David came back, adds Anna.
Running away, they reached the edge of the forest. There was a house by the road. Everyone ran into the yard where the residents were. – They probably heard shots – says Karolina. She admits that she was also worried about her boyfriend, who remained at the scene.
Anna also remembers the conversation with the house's inhabitants. – We said they wanted to kill us and these people told us to hide in the house. That's what we did. We were waiting for any help – he reports.
A common past. “He started intimidating me”
39-year-old Dawid M. and Anna were a couple in the past. They had a common son, Jaś, now 8 years old, but the relationship itself did not stand the test of time. The woman also has a 12-year-old daughter, but Dawid M. is not her father.
When Dawid M. became increasingly aggressive, Anna threatened to leave. He didn't want to accept it.
– I slept with gas in my hand because he could get up at night and shout to the whole house that Satan should possess him and kill us all – Anna recalls events from the past. And she adds: – He started intimidating me that if I wasn't with him, I wouldn't be with anyone. That he would kill me, kill the person I was supposed to be with.
The man left the house where they lived. However, this did not end Anna's nightmare. He took turns – sometimes he asked the woman for another chance, other times he threatened her with, among other things, setting her on fire. Last August, he broke into her house with a knife.
– He pushed me against the wall and I fell. The daughter started screaming: “Don't kill mom!” – says the woman. – Then he hid the knife and ran away – he adds.
A restraining order was issued against Dawid M. to approach his former partner. However, the man repeatedly broke it, constantly approaching Anna and threatening her. – He started driving and scaring me again. He chased me several times. I once went to the police station and he followed me. He yelled at me, I stood there. The officer on duty opened the window and said “silence!” and closed it. There was no mention of why we came or what it was about, he says.
Finally, Dawid M. was arrested. The court sentenced him to, among other things, three months in prison and banned him from contact with his former partner for the next five years. While the man was in prison, 49-year-old Adam appeared in Anna's life. – We fell in love with each other. My children, even though they had great fears after their experience with Dawid, loved him immediately. Everyone felt good in his company, he recalls.
– Adam always said he loved me very much. That he would give me one kidney, and if necessary, the other one, and that he might even give his life for me. He kept saying it all the time, from the very beginning. Now I wonder if he didn't do it – he adds.
Mr. Adam's body found
Let's go back to the tragic events of September 28. Police and firefighters arrived at the farm where Anna, her children and her friend were hiding.
– One policeman asked about PESEL and what happened. We told what happened, but I say it doesn't matter, that we need to look for a man who may have been shot, that maybe he is still alive and we can save him, says Anna.
According to her, she and her friend told the services “all the time” that something could have happened to Adam. – I saw Dawid running about 2-3 meters behind Adam and shooting – he points out.
– I also asked them to look for him. Let us walk through this field, because maybe he is still alive. They weren't interested in it at all – Karolina doesn't hide her indignation.
– The policemen said to the firefighters: “Maybe we should go and look for them?” They said: “What, do you want a bullet in the head? There are too many people there now,” Anna quotes.
– Four policemen, 12-15 firefighters and no one was willing to look for him with us – notes Tomasz, Anna's brother, who came to help his sister. – They stood in the road and didn't even want to give us a single flashlight. One firefighter out of all of them gave us a flashlight after we asked. He took it out and said: “here, go” – Malwina, Anna's other friend, echoes him.
Tomasz emphasizes that a total of four people were looking for his sister's partner. – We walked in the dark, with a flashlight on our phone. I found him after an hour and a half of searching, two hours after the accident at most – he adds. Adam was – according to his account – about 200-300 meters from the collision site.
– I was convinced he was alive. When the paramedics stopped resuscitating him, I went to them and begged them to keep trying. But they said he had been dead for an hour, says Karolina.
It was initially determined that Adam died an hour before his body was found. This means that for nearly forty minutes after the shots were fired, the injured man could have been waiting for rescue.
– Me and Adam, even though we had been together for a year, were as close as if we had been together for 20 years. Adam kept saying that we must have known each other in another life. He also said that he had been looking for me for so long in life and not to worry, because he would find me in the next life, adds Anna.
There were already disturbing signs earlier. What were the police doing?
Meanwhile, Dawid M. escaped from the crime scene to nearby Łódź. He hid in the abandoned apartment of his old friend, in one of the tenement houses in the city center. When anti-terrorists tried to enter the apartment, he committed suicide.
A dozen or so days earlier, Dawid M. lay in wait for Adam right next to his house and threatened him with a gun.
– Dawid pulled out a gun and said: “F… f… you!” He screamed. Adam said: “fuck it then.” And he turned around. The other hid his gun. The next day we went to report it to the police station in Głowno and that was it. It was a week and a half ago, says Anna.
– He didn't leave, he didn't hide underground. He moved here, he functioned. If they wanted to, they would have caught him. And this tragedy would not have happened – he thinks.
Krzysztof Kopania, spokesman for the District Prosecutor's Office in Łódź, informed after the accident that the alleged perpetrator had previously been convicted of, among others, the crime of robbery and making criminal threats.
What did the police do in the more than a week from the attack on Adam by Dawid M. until the tragedy on the road to stop the woman's former partner? Deputy Commissioner Robert Borowski, spokesman for the District Police Headquarters in Zgierz, explains in an interview with “Uwaga!” TVN: – We were looking for the man. We wanted to arrest this man as quickly as possible.
– I will add that the man did not have permanent residence – he notes.
When asked about the behavior of the police officers at the scene of the incident, when, according to reports, they were not supposed to be looking for a potential victim, he replied that “it happened in another district” and referred him to the spokesman of another unit. To the comment that the provincial headquarters had directed us to the headquarters in Zgierz, he replied that he could not answer why: “Attention!” TVN asked him this question.
Main photo source: “Attention!” TVN