Boy whose skull was caved in saving mum from rapist dies 19 months later

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A hero school boy who saved his mother from a brutal knifeman rapist has died 19 months after his skull was destroyed fighting off the monster. Vanya Krapivin, 16, came home from school to find neighbour Roman Pronin straddling his screaming, blood-soaked mum. The previously convicted murderer repeatedly attacked Natalia Krapivina, 43, with a knife and attempted to rape her.

Vanya – then 15 – entered the flat in Severodvinsk, northwest Russia and saw the appalling scene. He picked up a 3kg dumbbell and struck the beast.

However Pronin, 37, wrestled it from the boy’s hands and repeatedly pounded it over his head. Neighbours hearing the commotion called the police while the vicious attacker fled believing both were dead. Vanya and his mother were both found unconscious on the floor in the blood soaked flat. The boy fell into a coma for nine months while his mother had suffered 27 stab wounds – but her life was saved by her son’s bravery.

Deeply traumatised from her own experience and her son’s savage skull injuries, Natalia was released from hospital a few months later. However she has only been able to visit her son a handful of times after the horror of the ordeal, local reports say.

Her brave son suffered serious brain damage and lost almost all the frontal bone of his skull. Surgeons were forced to remove some of his brain, and a massive fund raising campaign was launched by prominent TV presenter Andrey Malakhov for titanium plates he needed in his skull and other medical expenses. One year later, Vanya showed ‘light signs of being conscious’ after treatment from top Russian surgeon Leonid Roshal. In June this year he started to recognise his nurse, and ate porridge and mashed food.

In July, he went to a rehabilitation centre in Moscow amid renewed hope of improvement. Funds were being raised to send the hero boy to Spain for further recovery.

But in October he contracted flu and despite intensive care treatment his condition worsened and he died on Tuesday this week. Natalia had pleaded with the authorities before the attack not to allow a released murderer to live in her block close to children. A criminal investigation is also underway into why the convicted murderer was allowed to live near children. Pronin was jailed for 14 years for two attempted murders and is now facing an additional murder charge after Vanya’s death.