Former camp inmate Hasan Jašarević gave killer Nermin Sulejmanović "blanks": I wasn't afraid, they had already taken me to be executed

“I was sitting in my armchair thinking about where to go hunting for the weekend. Then I heard some wheels squeaking in front of the shop. A black BMW. And he went straight from the car into my shop. Bare-chested. Bloody. With a pistol in his hand. He told me – give me all the 9-millimeter ammunition. It was a matter of seconds. I was thinking what to do and realized – I'll give him starter ammunition. I gave him six boxes. He grabbed them and went outside. One box fell out as he was leaving. It remained bloody.”

This is how Hasan Jašarević from Gradačac briefly described his encounter with the killer Nermin Sulejmanović to Istraga.ba.

“I will continue to kill,” Nermin Sulejmanović said in a live stream after he killed three people and injured three others in Gradačac on Friday.

But his bloody rampage was stopped by Hasan Jašarević, a seventy-seven-year-old shopkeeper at “Ribo Lovac” in Gradačac. He tricked the killer with “blanks”. However, by the time the killer realized it, it was too late. Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tuzla Canton had already surrounded him, so he fired the last bullet into his own temple.

“When he burst into the shop, I wasn't afraid. I am a camp survivor. I was in a camp in Šamac and in the Batković camp. They took me to be executed more than once. That experience was probably crucial for me to give him the fake ammunition,” says Jašarević in an interview with Istraga.ba.

As a reminder, on Friday morning, Nermin Sulejmanović held his common-law wife hostage, who had previously taken refuge with relatives, fleeing domestic violence. During the abduction, Sulejmanović first shot his wife's uncle. Then, broadcasting live on social media, he killed his wife, whom he had brutally beaten beforehand. After that, he killed Denis Cengiz in the center of Gradačac, and a little later his father Onder. When he ran out of ammunition, he went to the Ribo Lovac shop in the center of Gradačac.

“My granddaughter was in front of the shop. He passed by her and entered the shop. He pointed a gun at me and asked for ammunition,” recounts Hasan Jašarević.

When the killer left, Hasan locked the shop and went to the apartment above.

“Only then did I feel fear. I saw that my granddaughter was okay. I locked the apartment door and loaded a hunting rifle with small-caliber ammunition. I was afraid that when he realized I had given him fake ammunition, he would come back and kill me. I didn't know how many bullets he had.”

However, the killer did not return. He drove to a weekend house not far from the city. There he recorded his last address. When OSA located him, the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tuzla Canton moved in and surrounded him. Nermin Sulejmanović then shot himself in the head. The police found five boxes of starter ammunition next to him.