What happened
On the afternoon of July 19, 2018, Denis Ten encountered men at his car in central Almaty. Police and contemporary reporting said they were attempting to steal its side-view mirrors. A confrontation followed, and Ten was fatally wounded. He was taken to a hospital but died that day.
Ten was 25. He had won bronze in men's singles at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, becoming the first figure skater representing Kazakhstan to win an Olympic medal. His death produced national mourning and international tributes, but public prominence is not the basis for this site's legal classification; the solved status rests on the later criminal judgments.
Investigation and arrests
Authorities quickly identified suspects using witness accounts and surveillance material from the area. Almaty prosecutors announced that Nuraly Qiyasov had been detained and had made an incriminating statement in the presence of counsel. Arman Qudaibergenov was detained shortly afterward. Zhanar Tolybaeva was also prosecuted in connection with the events surrounding the attempted theft.
The trial record mattered because the defendants did not simply accept the prosecution's entire legal theory. Qudaibergenov and Qiyasov acknowledged theft-related conduct but contested the allegation that the killing had been premeditated. That distinction is preserved here rather than converting an early confession or police statement into a substitute for the verdict.
The January 2019 convictions
On January 17, 2019, an Almaty court convicted Qudaibergenov and Qiyasov of murder. Reporting on the judgment also identified violent-robbery convictions, with Qudaibergenov additionally convicted of theft. Each man received an 18-year prison sentence in a maximum-security facility.
Tolybaeva received a separate four-year sentence for offenses tied to the attempted theft and failure to report a crime. Her legal responsibility was therefore different from that of the two men convicted of Ten's murder, and this dossier does not describe her as a convicted murderer.
Later sentence litigation
The legal record did not end in 2019. In October 2024, Kazakhstan's Supreme Court considered an effort by the two murder defendants to obtain cassation review. Their lawyer sought acquittal, but the court refused to refer the case for cassational review and left the sentences standing.
That 2024 ruling is important to the current-status label. It shows that the 18-year murder judgments had not been reversed by the later challenge. A post-conviction request for review is reported as a procedural fact, not treated as evidence that the original verdict was wrong.
Why the case remains distinct from rumor
Ten's public profile led to intense attention immediately after his death. The factual core, however, is unusually well documented: the confrontation over the car mirrors, rapid arrests, a full criminal trial, two murder convictions and a later Supreme Court decision leaving the sentences in effect. Crime by Region relies on those institutional milestones rather than social-media claims or speculation about alternative motives.
Timeline
July 19, 2018: Denis Ten is fatally attacked in Almaty after confronting men attempting to steal mirrors from his car.
July 20, 2018: authorities announce the detention of suspects as the murder investigation develops.
January 17, 2019: Arman Qudaibergenov and Nuraly Qiyasov are convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years each; Zhanar Tolybaeva receives a separate four-year sentence on other charges.
2019–2021: Tolybaeva's custodial status changes in separate sentence-execution proceedings; those changes do not alter the two murder convictions.
October 10, 2024: Kazakhstan's Supreme Court refuses to refer Qudaibergenov and Qiyasov's case for cassational review and leaves their sentences in force.
Current status
The murder of Denis Ten is classified Solved / Adjudicated. Two defendants were convicted of his murder and violent robbery, both received 18-year sentences, and Kazakhstan's Supreme Court left those judgments in force during a 2024 cassation challenge. This status describes adjudicated criminal responsibility and does not imply that every collateral sentence-execution issue involving every defendant remained unchanged.