JusticeVaroš, Split
On Saturday, January 11, 2020, shortly after 3:30 p.m., three men were killed with an automatic rifle in Split’s Varoš district. Filip Zavadlav, a 25-year-old seafarer, was convicted in two trials. After five court rulings, the Supreme Court upheld a 35-year prison sentence. Zavadlav maintains that he did not fire the shots.
Follow five court rulingsInteractive sequences of events and graphs have not been loaded. See the explanation of the sentence.
I was expecting an acquittal, and now I'm going to write a constitutional suit that I have a month's notice for.
The shooting lasted several minutes, at two locations in Varoš, the old neighborhood west of Split. Follow the path from the first shots to the arrest: click the station or run the playback. The display is schematic, not in scale.
Shooter path, step by step
† Murdered · the order of the indictment
Defendant Filip Zavadlav was born in Split in 1995, the eldest of three brothers. Media accounts describe a childhood marked by domestic violence. He reported his mother to the police at age 13. He trained as a seafarer and in 2018 spent 14 months at sea as a deck officer. A nun helped him rent a flat of his own.
ThemeAccording to the indictment and the defense, the people of the Split drug mile from the brothers were looking for money for the debts of the younger brother Stanislav, threatened them and physically assaulted them. They wrote that Philip owed two to three years and that they were asking for more, that he had been beaten and threatened in his apartment.
Weeks agoTwo weeks before the shooting he confided in his nun to think about suicide and not to sleep. A witness who had seen him two days before said that he had not slept for ten days, lost his 12 kilo and threatened him with knives. The prosecution claims that AKalashnikov illegally acquired about five months earlier.
MaturityPsychiatry at the Sparrow Clinic found that at the time of the work there was a significant reduction in the number of people, and the defense claimed that he was completely unaccountable.
Case actors
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The subject has passed all three levels of criminal prosecution. The first sentence was overturned because the court has not sufficiently examined the motive. The retrial ended with the same sentence, which the High Criminal Court then reduced. When a long-term prison was handed down, the appeal to the Supreme Court was allowed as a third degree.
Moving objects through institutions
Last sentence, in age
Move the pointer over the graph to see the punishment and time spent in prison on any date.
No one saw him shoot. The witnesses said they saw “a man with an automatic rifle”, and some recognized him only with the recordings. At the retrial: “I agree with the motive, deny the commission.”
The shooter was recorded by the passersby on his cell phone, and the rifle was found in the container the next day.
He got the rifle in advance, “according to the decision and plan”.
It was not proven with sufficient certainty; it acted in a situational way, so it was “ordinary” killings. In 2022, the VKS still abolished the first verdict because the conclusion was the result of “particular and non-critical analysis of the testimony of the witnesses examined”.
Defender Branko Sheric claimed that Zavadlav was innumerable and sought new skills; the work was described as “compulsive behavior”.
Significantly reduced counting, according to skill from Sparrow. It is an relieved circumstance and one of the reasons for the reduction of sentence to 35 years.
From the beginning, the prosecution claimed that it was heavy killings from ruthless revenge and sought 50 for years. The courts did not accept that qualification and it was dependent on the upper limit of the sentence. For "normal" murders, the single penalty could be the most 40 year; 50 is only possible if at least two individual sentences are a long-term prison.
Murder or serious murder?
The prescribed ranges of penalties, in age
Individual penalties and uniform penalties
The single penalty must be greater than the largest individual, must not reach their sum nor exceed 40 years (Article 51. KZ)
The High Criminal Court of 2025 reduced the sentence from 40 to 35 for years, taking into account the totality of aggravating and facilitating circumstances, the changed legal qualification and especially the age of Zavadala, the indemnity and characteristics of the mental state.
How much is served?
January 11, 2020 investigative prison is included in sentence
For part of the public, Zavadlav became a symbol of the inability of citizens to face crime and slow institutions.
A Facebook support group called Justice for the Philippines was gathered in just two days after the crime. The group was removed, then relaunched as closed, with about 15,000 members.
Source: Non-tocracy, January 14, 2020
Is the sentence of 35 years...
Index.hr portal survey after a final ruling, more than 34,000 votes · is not representative
As the mother of her late son, Jurice Torlak, who along with two other young men lost his life, I am deeply shaken and disappointed by the information that the verdict against Filip Zavadlav is now competent.
I'm sorry that you ended your youth in such a tragic decision, and I'm even more sorry that you live in such a sick state.
Sociologist Renato Matić warns that between the sentences “I understand why he did it” and “he had the right to do it” there is a huge moral and legal difference. Support of Zavadlavu, he believes, is actually a story of trust in the country.
Data Notice. Media differs in some details: number of bullets (37 in the indictment, 36 found casings), age and format of the victims, order of locations and exact location of the container. Where the sources differed, we followed the indictment and court decisions; for the victims we state the year of birth from the indictment. The exact time between the shooting and the arrest was not published, so the display does not invent them. Legal ranges of penalties are summarised according to the Penal Code (NN 125/11 and amendments).