The police have published an explanation regarding their intervention on Saturday after receiving a report about a loud bang near Garwolin. The statement responds to growing concerns about whether officers reacted appropriately to residents’ warnings before an act of sabotage was later discovered on the Warsaw–Dorohusk railway line, near the PKP Mika stop.
The course of the intervention was thoroughly reviewed on the order of the provincial police commander in Radom. This decision followed questions about whether officers from the Garwolin County Police properly carried out their duties after receiving information about the loud noise. According to the police, the actions taken by the officers were appropriate, considering the nature of the report and the findings made during the intervention.
What did the intervention look like?
At 9:43 p.m., the duty officer at the Garwolin police station received a phone call reporting a bang heard about 40 minutes earlier. When asked to indicate the source of the sound, the caller pointed toward the village of Podebłocie. Two minutes later, at 9:45 p.m., a two-officer patrol was dispatched to respond. While driving, the officers checked the home of an elderly woman, whose family said they had not heard any noise.
The officers drove, among other places, through the PKP Mika level crossing, where they saw no people or anything that might raise concern. During their patrol, they paid particular attention to any signs of smoke or fire, but found nothing of that sort.
At 10:07 p.m., the patrol reached the village of Życzyn, where the loud noise had been heard. Together with the caller, the officers checked the area around Podebłocie, Piotrówek, Kozice, Życzyn, Wola Życka, Dębówka, and the vicinity of the PKP Mika crossing. The patrol questioned people they encountered, but nowhere were they able to determine a potential source of the loud sound.
Residents thought it was a boiler explosion. Police did not check the tracks
A key point in the police explanation is that the caller told officers she had waited 40 minutes before reporting the incident because she and her neighbors initially thought it was a boiler explosion, a gas-bottle blast, or a traffic accident.
At 10:15 p.m., another police unit from Garwolin arrived in the Trojanów municipality and checked nearby residential areas, focusing on the possibility of a gas-bottle explosion. At 11:10 p.m., after finding nothing suspicious, officers ended the intervention. The next morning, a major railway disaster was narrowly avoided when a train driver stopped his train just in time.
The police emphasize that at no point—either at the time of the report or while questioning residents during the patrol—did anyone suggest that the noise might have come from the direction of the railway tracks. On the contrary, residents pointed toward nearby buildings. However, officers did not check the tracks at the location where the explosion later proved to have occurred.
Russian sabotage on the Warsaw–Dorohusk route
Acts of sabotage took place last weekend along the Warsaw–Dorohusk railway route. In the village of Mika in Garwolin County, an explosive device destroyed a section of railway track. In another location, near the Gołąb station in Puławy County, a train carrying 475 passengers had to make an emergency stop on Sunday due to damage to the railway line.
In light of these dramatic events, questions have arisen about whether the police responded properly to Saturday’s report of a loud bang—noise that, as it later turned out, was connected to the sabotage of the railway infrastructure.
During the investigation, evidence was obtained indicating a very high probability that the perpetrators of this terrorist-type act of sabotage were Oleksandr K. (born 1986) and Evgenij I (born 1984). The evidence in the investigators’ possession includes forensic examinations of the crime scenes, witness testimonies, telecommunications data, and CCTV recordings. A request for temporary arrest has been filed with the court—though this will be extremely difficult, as both suspects have already escaped to Belarus.