Five-year-old Bahdana from Belarus died in Crimea

In September 2025, a court in Crimea found Tatiana Vadetskaya, the owner of a guest house in Sudak, guilty of the death of five-year-old Bahdana, who had come for a holiday with her parents and two brothers.

The tragedy occurred in the summer of 2024 at the "Guest House on Kommunalnaya". A large family from Belarus was vacationing there. In the morning, as the family was preparing to leave, the mother was standing with her back to the wardrobe, packing things, her daughter was nearby talking to her, and the father had gone outside. A few minutes later, the mother heard her daughter's scream and a loud thud — the wooden wardrobe standing against the wall fell, and the girl ended up underneath it. The father, who rushed into the room, lifted the wardrobe and carried the unconscious Bahdana to the car to drive to the hospital.

According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, the girl sustained an open craniocerebral injury, which caused brain and lung edema and multiple organ failure. After 35 days of treatment at the Sudak hospital, Bahdana died.

An examination of the wardrobe revealed a defect in the plastic insert on the inner part of the right front leg — the material was not intact, preventing the support from fully touching the floor.

Павялічыць

Vadetskaya did not admit guilt. In court, she claimed that the wardrobe, purchased in 2013, had never fallen or wobbled before, and that before the family's check-in, she personally placed bedding in it and noticed no damage.

According to her version, Bahdana, who loved to play in the wardrobe and hide in it, could have climbed to the top by herself, from where she fell headfirst. The woman pointed out that there were no traces of blood on the wardrobe itself or the adjacent nightstand, and also that no one saw the moment of the fall.

The court rejected all of Vadetskaya's arguments. It was decided that the injury resulted from an impact with a voluminous flat object of significant mass and could not have occurred from a fall from the child's own height. The presence of the leg defect, which made the structure unstable, according to the court, specifically confirms the version of the wardrobe falling, not the girl's independent actions. The court indicated that Vadetskaya, by renting out accommodation, knew about the condition of the furniture in the rooms, including the wardrobe, which had been in use for over 10 years and whose service life had expired, yet continued to accommodate guests in this room, including a family with a small girl.

The woman was sentenced to three years of probation with a two-year probationary period — for "providing services that do not meet the safety requirements for the life and health of consumers, which negligently led to a person's death." However, the girl's mother stated in court that she had no complaints against the owner of the house and considered the incident an accident.

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