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Employees killed for asking for pay raises

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 1, 2007

ATLANTA - A financially strapped owner of a car dealership told authorities that he was under stress when he killed two employees because they kept asking for pay raises, police said Tuesday.

Rolandas Milinavicius was charged in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28. All three are from the eastern European nation of Lithuania and had been living in Atlanta, authorities said.

Milinavicius, who was having financial problems, told police he shot the two Thursday after they kept asking for more pay, said police in East Point, which is just outside Atlanta.

Milinavicius, 38, turned himself in two days after the shootings and confessed to the killings, saying he was under a lot of stress, East Point police Capt. Russell Popham said.

"As I understand, the employees were not really happy about the pay, and they had questioned him about it over the course of time," Popham said. "That morning he said he just snapped."

At a jailhouse hearing Tuesday, Milinavicius listened through an interpreter as the charges were read against him. He faces two counts of felony murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and he was denied bond.

Milinavicius, who had been living in Alpharetta, started RM Auto International two years ago, hoping to meet the demand for American cars in Lithuania. He began shipping cars and later hired the two victims as his only employees.

Nobody was at the car dealership Tuesday afternoon. Smashed-up cars with broken windshields and crumpled hoods were scattered around the back of the building.

"It doesn't make any sense," Simokaitis' cousin, Jaunius Simokaitis, said Monday. "If he was having money problems, these two would have been the ones to help him get out of debt. They would have helped him make that money."

[Last modified August 1, 2007, 01:47:44]