Andrew Bretford Stone, a Minnesotan, is doing a postgraduate course at the Novgorod University, in Russia's northwest. He was assaulted in the night March 21, while walking home from the movies. Three boys attacked him-one of them with an IZh 53M pneumatic pistol-and demanded money. When Andrew produced his wallet, they did not take the money, however, but cruelly battered their prey.
The American duly received first aid, and the police promptly tracked down the assaulters.
Vitali Bulgakov, 20, was student of the Novgorod technological vocational school, and Sergei Zaitsev, 17, secondary school leaver. The court qualified their crime as premeditated gang robbery.
Bulgakov was sentenced to five years in a convict camp and a fine, and the underage Zaitsev to four years in an approved school, and also a fine.
Andrei Shibayev, 16, their accomplice, was a secondary school ninth-former. The court qualified him as hoodlum, and convicted him to two years, the sentence suspended for the same term.
The hearings were a sensation in the entire locality round the city-no one of local people has ever been tried for a crime against a foreigner.
