23 Facts About Vitaly Kaloyev

In 2004, Vitaly Kaloyev travelled to the Swiss town of Kloten, where he killed Nielsen, who had since retired from his air traffic control job at Skyguide.

In 2016, upon retirement from the local Ossetian government, Vitaly Kaloyev was awarded the highest regional medal by that government, the medal "To the Glory of Ossetia".

Vitaly Kaloyev had lost his wife Svetlana Kaloyeva and two children, 10-year-old Konstantin and 4-year-old Diana in the Uberlingen mid-air collision in 2002.

Vitaly Kaloyev participated in the search for the bodies and located a broken pearl necklace owned by his daughter, Diana.

Vitaly Kaloyev found her body, which was intact, as some trees had broken her fall.

Vitaly Kaloyev spent the first year after the accident lingering at the graves of his family and building a shrine to them in his home.

Vitaly Kaloyev then hired a Moscow private investigator to find Nielsen's address outside Zurich, before travelling to the former air traffic controller's home in Kloten.

Vitaly Kaloyev waved a piece of paper with Nielsen's name on it.

The neighbour pointed to Nielsen's front door, but instead of knocking, Vitaly Kaloyev sat down in the garden.

Vitaly Kaloyev spotted the intruder, went outside and asked what he wanted.

Vitaly Kaloyev said his children were the youngest on board Flight 2937, so there was no need for him to identify the bodies.

Vitaly Kaloyev said he was crushed by the loss of his family: "I have been living in the cemetery for almost two years, sitting beside their graves".

Vitaly Kaloyev wanted Nielsen to apologize to him for the death of his family.

Vitaly Kaloyev offered no explanation for why he brought the weapon with him on a peaceful errand and initially denied the killing entirely.

On 26 October 2005, Vitaly Kaloyev was convicted of the premeditated killing of Nielsen and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

On 23 August 2007, the court accepted the appeal, and Vitaly Kaloyev remained in prison.

On 8 November 2007, Vitaly Kaloyev was released from prison on parole after having served only two-thirds of his sentence, a total of three and a half years.

Vitaly Kaloyev was an idiot and that's why he paid for it with his life.

The Swiss government asked Vitaly Kaloyev to repay the costs of his imprisonment, about US$157,000.

When Vitaly Kaloyev travelled to Germany to attend the 10th-anniversary memorial, he was detained by German authorities, saying that he was on a Swiss watch list.

Vitaly Kaloyev held this post until 15 January 2016, when he retired, receiving the highest state award by the local government, the medal "To the Glory of Ossetia", on his 60th birthday.

Vitaly Kaloyev remarried more than a decade after the air tragedy, in approximately 2012 or 2013, to a woman named Irina Dzarasova, who was an engineer at OAO Sevkavkazenergo.

Beside his portrayal in news reports, Vitaly Kaloyev has been portrayed in many forms of media in the years after the Uberlingen mid-air collision.