Police say Albanian, 17, kills neighbor in family blood feud

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — An Albanian teenager on Monday killed his 65-year old neighbor to revenge the shooting death of his father 13 years ago, according to police and local media.

Police said a 17-year-old in the village of Manati, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northwest of the capital Tirana, shot dead a 65-year old man “for suspected revenge motives.” Local media, Balkanweb.com news media portal, reported that Florian Pervathi handed himself in to police afterward.

Pervathi was four years old when his father Gjon was shot dead in 2009. The night before his death, Gjon had two glasses of the local raki drink then shot over the roof of the neighbors, according to the Shqiptarja.com portal.

Neighbors responded by shooting him dead and rushing away in a car, which also injured Pervathi’s eldest son. Believing that her eldest son was dead, too, Pervathi’s 40-year-old wife poisoned herself.

Florian, a child at the time, saw nothing but heard everything from his grandfather, the news portals said. Pervathi’s family did not agree to reach a reconciliation with the killer’s family and after serving some years in jail, the killer left the country, the media outlets said.

On Monday the teenager, Florian, shot dead the killer’s brother, a 65-year-old man, police said.

Local media said Florian was lonely after his grandfather died and his elder brother was imprisoned for some unknown reason. But he now faces 30 or more years in prison for the murder, according to the country’s penal code, which has been toughened to try to stop the blood feuds.

Thousands of Albanians have died in blood feuds in post-communist Albania. The blood feud is a centuries-old tradition putting an obligation on an individual to kill to salvage his family’s honor.