PALMER -- The 38-year-old man accused of killing his mother showed up at the Wasilla police station early New Year’s Eve with a “thousand-yard stare” and a gun in his pocket, court documents show.
Denys Abramov was charged with second-degree murder as well as two weapons offenses after he turned himself in Tuesday morning.
A complaint filed with the charges at Palmer’s courthouse doesn’t shed any light on a motive in the death of 60-year-old Olha Abramova.
Just before 4 a.m. that day, Abramov approached the back of the Wasilla police station, where an officer was letting a K9 police dog out off leash, according to a sworn affidavit filed with the charges by Officer Nate Lecours. He ignored the officer’s warning to stay back so the officer went back inside the station.
Lecours and another officer opened the back door to find Abramov there, with his hands in his pockets. Abramov was asked several times to take out his hands, and stared into Lecours’ eyes “while he advanced toward me,” the officer wrote. He removed his hands, and the officers realized Abramov was holding a .357 caliber Ruger in one.
An “obvious language barrier” complicated any questions until a police employee who speaks Russian and Ukrainian was found to help via speakerphone, the affidavit said. Through the translator, Lecours asked what brought Abramov to the station with a gun in his pocket at 4 a.m.
“He replied, ‘I shot my mom,’” the officer wrote. Asked if the woman was alive, Abramov told the officers she was dead. He also asked for a lawyer.
Police found Abramova outside a Wasilla church, dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest, according to the affidavit. They also found a Ruger gun case in the bedroom of the apartment the two shared.
As of Friday, Abramov was being held at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility on $150,000 cash bail.