Police reveal names of 2 people killed in Fort Lauderdale and 4 in Sarasota
Investigators say they believe a double-homicide in an upscale Fort Lauderdale neighborhood Tuesday afternoon is linked to the discovery of five people shot to death in Sarasota after the South Florida killings.
Detectives said Wednesday that the man responsible for all seven of the deaths, including his own, was 51-year-old Russell Kot.
Fort Lauderdale police were called to conduct a welfare check at a town home on the 500 block of Northeast 15th Avenue in the Victoria Park neighborhood around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and found two people dead inside, the department said.
Police identified the victims as 46-year-old Larisa Blyudaya and Ben Azivov, 18. The department would not say how they were killed. A Facebook post spelled the teen’s last name as Azizov.
Sarasota detectives say Blyudaya and Kot — who also lived in Fort Lauderdale, according to police — might have been in a romantic relationship.
A neighbor told CBS News Miami that he saw someone go into the residence early in the morning.
“Yesterday morning, I was loading my tools, and I saw a guy running around here. He went to the driveway, hit the keypad, the door went up, I didn’t think anything of it,” said Mark Scinna, “Then I got a call about what had happened. I started tying everything together and said ‘Man, I hope that wasn’t the guy I saw.’ ”
About an hour before the discovery of the bodies in Fort Lauderdale, Sarasota Sheriff’s Office deputies found a man with gunshot wounds lying in a front yard in the gated Amberlea neighborhood. When they arrived, deputies saw neighbors performing CPR on the man. The neighbors told deputies the man’s wife was inside the house, the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
Paramedics arrived and said the man was dead.
Deputies went inside the home and found two men and two women dead. Investigators say they believe Kot killed the others then killed himself, according to the press release.
The sheriff’s office identified the victims as Olga Greinert, 49; Florita Stolyar, 66; Anatoly Ioffe, 61; and 39-year-old Yaroslav Blyudoy.
As Sarasota detectives were trying to identify the victims, Fort Lauderdale police contacted them about the Victoria Park homicides and said they believed the killings were related, according to the press release.
Sarasota detectives say one of the victims in Fort Lauderdale “was connected to the victims in Sarasota,” adding the “motivation for targeting the Sarasota victims is unknown.”
The 500 block of Northeast 15th Avenue in the Victoria Park neighborhood was mostly quiet Wednesday afternoon. There were no signs of police or indicators of a crime scene. Reporters were staged across from 561 NE 15th Ave., but police have not confirmed the exact address of the incident.
Fort Lauderdale detectives told Sarasota investigators that Kot’s vehicle was seen heading north through Punta Gorda just prior to the shootings in Amberlea, the sheriff’s office said.
Amberlea residents gave detectives security- and doorbell-camera footage that showed Kot’s vehicle entering the neighborhood just after 11 a.m., the sheriff’s office said. A doorbell camera captured the sound of gunfire shortly after the car arrived, deputies said.
About 37 minutes later, the man who was later found wounded outside was seen on footage entering the neighborhood in his vehicle, the sheriff’s office said. As he approached the front door of the house, he was shot, according to the press release. After that, no one was seen entering or exiting the home on the camera footage, the sheriff’s office said.
According to Sarasota County property records, Stolyar and Ioffe own the Fallcrest Circle house where the murders happened. They bought the home in August 2023, according to the Sarasota Property Appraiser’s Office.
Both were Facebook friends with Blyudaya and Azizov, the victims in Fort Lauderdale.
Blyudaya and Kot both lived in Cook County, Illinois. She lived there until 2024, according to a Nexis search, and he is still listed as having a home there. The two were Facebook friends at least until November, but Kot no longer appears on Blyudaya’s friends list.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
This story was originally published February 11, 2026 at 3:04 PM.
