AP News, November 20th, 2007
Police investigating the playground killing of an orthodontist who was involved in a bitter child custody dispute have arrested a relative of his ex-wife, the police commissioner said Tuesday.
Dr. Daniel Malakov, 34, died Oct. 28 while taking his 5-year-old daughter, Michelle, to a visit with his former wife, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, at a playground in Queens. As the child went to greet her mother, a gunman fired three rounds into Malakov's chest.
Mikhail Malayev was arrested in Chamblee, Ga., and his fingerprints matched those found on a homemade silencer used in the killing, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The 50-year-old suspect is related to Borukhova through her sister's husband, police said.
Malakov's lawyer, Nathan Pinkhasov, has said the orthodontist and Borukhova, a specialist in internal medicine who also goes by the name Marina Borukhova, had waged a fierce battle over custody of Michelle. Malakov had won custody just days before the shooting.
Detectives were investigating whether Mallayev "was hired or otherwise induced to commit this crime," police spokesman Paul Browne said.
Borukhova has denied speculation that she was involved in the shooting. A call to her attorney Tuesday was not immediately returned.
Mallayev refused to agree to extradition to New York, a sheriff's official in Georgia said. He was ordered held without bail while officials awaited a warrant ordering his return.
Malakov immigrated to the United States from Tashkent, one of tens of thousands of Bukharan Jews who arrived in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
