The shooting
During the evening of July 27, 2007, Nikola Radosavljević moved through Jabukovac with a hunting firearm and shot residents of the village. Serbian police and contemporary reporting established a death toll of nine, with two additional residents seriously wounded. The youngest person killed was 15 years old.
The victims were neighbors and members of local families whose ordinary lives were interrupted in a matter of minutes. The scale of the attack made the case one of Serbia's most notorious mass killings of the period.
The manhunt and arrest
Police deployed specialist units and helicopters during a search that continued into the early hours of July 28. Radosavljević was found near the village cemetery and taken into custody after suffering injuries. The identity of the person responsible for the shootings was therefore not an unresolved question.
Psychiatric assessment
After the arrest, a team of forensic neuropsychiatric experts examined Radosavljević. The Negotin prosecutor publicly reported that the experts diagnosed a paranoid psychotic condition and concluded that, at the time of the killings, he was unable to understand the significance of what he was doing or control his actions.
That finding mattered legally. Serbian criminal law distinguishes proof that a person carried out an act from criminal responsibility for that act. A person found legally incapable at the time of an offense is not treated as a convicted prisoner in the same way as a defendant found criminally responsible.
The court's decision
In December 2007, the District Court in Negotin accepted the expert finding and did not enter an ordinary guilty verdict carrying a prison term. Instead, the court imposed compulsory treatment in a closed psychiatric institution.
Later Serbian reporting has continued to describe Radosavljević as confined in psychiatric care rather than serving a conventional prison sentence. Reporting in July 2026, 19 years after the attack, again noted that the court had found him legally incapable and sent him for mandatory psychiatric treatment.
What remains clear — and what does not
The identity of the shooter and the basic sequence of the attack are established. What this archive does not do is treat sensational explanations for the attack as medical or judicial fact. Contemporary coverage frequently discussed local beliefs about curses or so-called Vlach magic. Those claims are part of the public narrative around the case, not a substitute for the psychiatric evidence accepted by the court.
Timeline
July 27, 2007: nine residents of Jabukovac are killed and two others seriously wounded.
Early July 28, 2007: police capture Nikola Radosavljević after a large search operation.
October 2007: the Negotin prosecutor says forensic experts found Radosavljević legally incapable of understanding or controlling his actions during the killings.
December 2007: the District Court in Negotin accepts the incapacity finding and orders compulsory treatment in a secure institution instead of a prison sentence.
July 2026: Serbian reporting still describes him as under psychiatric institutional care.
Current classification
The Jabukovac case is classified Solved / Adjudicated because the perpetrator was identified and the court formally adjudicated the legal consequence of his mental state. The classification does not mean that Radosavljević was criminally convicted; he was found not criminally responsible and subjected to compulsory treatment.
Sources
- Politika — July 28, 2007: nine killed, two seriously wounded and arrest near the cemetery
- Blic — October 6, 2007: prosecutor's account of the forensic finding of legal incapacity
- Blic — December 13, 2007: Negotin court outcome and compulsory secure treatment
- Blic — July 27, 2026: current retrospective and continuing psychiatric placement