3 ‘GTA gang’ members killed in gunfight at Moscow courthouse

MOSCOW — A courthouse became the scene of a deadly firefight on Tuesday afternoon, after five gang members awaiting trial tried to escape by seizing firearms from police officers, officials said.

Five members of the socalled GTA gang — a name used by the Russian media in reference to the video game series “Grand Theft Auto” — were due for a hearing at the Moscow Regional Court when the melee broke out, according to Svetlana Petrenko, an official with the Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI.

While riding in an elevator, one of the defendants suddenly began to choke a police officer, while the other defendants disarmed a second officer.

One of the two officers, who work for the Russian Interior Ministry, managed to call for help from the National Guard, an elite military unit.

After the elevator doors were opened by the defendants inside, the National Guard officers opened fire, killing three defendants and injuring two others. Their names and ages were not released.

Around 20 shots were fired in total, according to witnesses.

Three law enforcement officers — two with the Interior Ministry, and one with the National Guard — were injured.

A court spokeswoman said the building was evacuated amid the chaos. The scene appeared to have returned to normal within a few hours of the firefight.

The GTA gang — which largely consists of men from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia — was behind a series of murders in the Moscow area in 2014.

Operating in the capital’s outskirts, its members killed 17 drivers and passengers, leaving behind their belongings in all but one case. Russian news outlets at the time reported that the gang’s method of trapping victims involved lining highways at night with caltrops — a device with four metal points arranged so that when any three are on the ground, the fourth projects upward to puncture tires.

Motorists who drove over the caltrops ended up stranded in the dark, their tires deflated, at which point the gang emerged from the shadows.

The fact that the gang members were from Central Asia particularly disturbed Russians at the time because of concerns about Islamist terrorism, an issue that returned to the fore this year after the April bombing in the St. Petersburg subway, which was carried out by a man said to be from Kyrgyzstan.

The gang remained at large for several months, leading locals to form armed patrols. Ultimately, the Investigative Committee succeeded in neutralizing the gang. In November 2014, authorities arrested five gang members and killed their leader, an Uzbek citizen.