Artur Kotsoev

Age: 38

Summary: Russian school custodian who had been hospitalized in very serious condition in an intensive care unit for three months from a bullet wound to the right shoulder received in the September 2004 Beslan school hostage-taking crisis at Middle School Number One in the southern Russian town of Beslan after he carried several children out of the school's gym during a rescue operation when a group of Chechen-led Islamic separatist militants attacked and took more than 1,200 children and adults hostage on the first day of school, in which the siege ended three days later after the terrorists detonated bombs in the packed gymnasium precipitating a firefight between militants and Russian security forces, killing more than 300 civilians (half of them were children) in the ensuing maelstrom of explosions and gunfire.

Cause of Death: Complications from a gunshot wound sustained the terrorist attack

Born: August 6, 1966

Died: December 5, 2004

Location: Moscow, Russia