They hit Danka, put her in the car, strangled her when she regained consciousness, now blame each other

Photo: Nikola Andjic/Private archive

Workers from the Vodovod public utility company in the town of Bor, Srdjan Jankovic and Dejan Dragijevic, are suspected of killing toddler Danka Ilic.

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Ninoslav Cmolic, head of the Criminal Police Administration (UKP), revealed for Informer the gruesome details of the crime committed in the Bor settlement of Banjsko Polje, eastern Serbia.

The police are yet to find the girl's body.

Cmolic said that the suspect, after hitting Danka with the company car they were traveling in, thought she was dead and put her in the trunk, but the little girl was alive and at one point regained consciousness!

"According to their statements, they stopped to urinate near the house. Later, when they moved on, they hit Danka and then put her in the trunk. A strange movement of their vehicle was recorded by the GPS. Their stories do not match regarding the strangulation of the child, because she woke up and the passenger strangled Danka, but they do not agree on who did the strangling, and later they threw the body in a garbage dump," the head of the UKP said and added:

"Evidence is being collected around the clock. One of the killers has a block and can't remember where he left the body. The fact is that their stories match regarding the details of the child being hit (by their car), but they disagreed about the actual killing. Danka was left unconscious when they hit her, and they thought she was dead, so they were surprised that she woke up, and one of them strangled her, and in the end they dumped the body," said Cmolic.

Telegraf.rs made a reconstruction of the crime that shocked the entire country. President Aleksandar Vucic himself said the suspects are "two monsters."

"They confessed to the killing. They both confessed," he said yesterday.

All the details regarding this were presented at the press conference yesterday by the visibly shaken Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic.

Reconstruction

Last Tuesday, March 26, around 13:10, Danka's mother Ivana Ilic took the girl and her other child to Banjsko Polje by car, so that the children could play.

The children were playing all the time in the yard of the house, and the mother was taking photos of them.

The suspects, who work for the local waterworks public company arrive in Banjsko Polje at 13:20 in a company vehicle, to check a shaft.

Two minutes later, Ivana sent her husband Milos photos of the children playing in the yard.

When the older child asked her for water, she went to her car to get it, and when she returned she realized that Danka was gone. She spent almost 20 minutes trying to find Danka by herself in the village, and then at 13:41 called her husband and said that their daughter was missing.

About ten minutes later, Ivana, while looking for the 2-year-old, saw a white Fiat Panda in which Srdjan and Dejan were traveling.

The car

Between 13:50 and 13:52 the car was parked in front of the gate of the Ilic family house, and they told the police that they stopped there because they needed to use the bathroom.

The police says that their car hit the child 30 meters from the spot where they had previously stopped. At that time, the car was driven by Dejan, while the second suspect, Srdjan, was in the passenger seat.

Srdjan then got out of the car and put Danka in the back of the vehicle over some tools and machines, then got back in the car and they continued driving.

During the drive, they agreed to dispose of the body somewhere.

The father

Foto: Facebook/Ivana Ilić/Miloš Ilić

Next the father and then the police arrived in the village and an extensive search for the child began.

At 13:55, about 15 minutes after his wife called him, Danka's father Milos Ilic arrived in Banjsko Polje with his colleagues. He stopped the Fiat Panda inside which were Srdjan and Dejan, and asked them if they might have seen the little girl.

Although the child was in the vehicle at the time, they replied that they did not and then continued on their way.

A few minutes later, the police arrived in Banjsko Polje and started looking for the toddler.

As the police began searching the area, the suspects were driving along Starobanjski Road and arrived at a local garbage dump, where they stayed for one minute and 49 seconds. Srdjan took the child's body from the car and then threw it on a pile of garbage.

The other suspect was standing by the car during this time, watching if anyone was passing by.

The police continued to search the area, and citizens joined in.

Among them was the suspect Srdjan, who came to Banjsko Polje and joined the action, after he got a call from the Vodovod director.

At 18:57 the same day, Serbia's version of Amber Alert was activated for the first time.

Over the following ten days, the police, rescue services and firefighters searched the area in Banjsko Polje and its surroundings, trying to locate the missing girl.

At a news conference yesterday, the interior minister revealed in detail the time interval between when the family arrived at the property and when the child disappeared.

Gasic also announced that it had been confirmed that little Danka was killed.

(Telegraf.rs, Informer)