Draučiai shooting
1998 shooting spree in Lithuania
The Draučiai shooting was a shooting spree that occurred in Draučiai, a small village in the Širvintos District Municipality, Lithuania on February 15, 1998, when 58-year-old Leonardas Zavistonovičius, a Polish local, killed nine civilians and wounded another, before being beaten to death. Due to the ethnicities of the perpetrator and the victims, it was speculated that the crime was politically motivated, but an investigation showed that Zavistonovičius had a severe mental illness, thus debunking the speculations.
Shooting
At approximately 4 p.m. on Sunday, Zavistonovičius armed himself with a Russian hunting rifle IZH-12 and a Czech carbine ZKK-601 with telescopic sight. Both weapons were held legally with a permit renewed less than a year prior to the incident. Within the next half hour, he went to four houses, where he killed nine of his neighbours and their relatives, all of them with single shots to the head or chest.
Zavistonovičius first went to the most distant farm from his house. Its owner, Jonas Bareika, was shot and killed in his bed. He also shot Bareikas' partner Marytė Rutkauskienė, who, at the time, was making broom stalls. Afterwards, he approached Bareikas' neighbour Leonas Garbatavičius, whom he shot dead at the front door of his house.
“Draučiai shooting” enters the record as 1998 shooting spree in Lithuania. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Draučiai, shooting and spree can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Draučiai shooting” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Draučiai, shooting and spree provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16209782. Authority coordinates are 54.901, 24.912. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1998.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Draučiai shooting”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Draučiai shooting primary sources, Draučiai shooting archive and Draučiai research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Draučiai shooting”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Draučiai shooting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.