On Tuesday night, 25 April 2000, around 21:30 CET, Petrović was killed by unknown assassin(s) in front of his parents' home at 20 Jaša Prodanović Street in Belgrade.

[1] Petrović was reportedly parking his JAT-issued metallic gray Audi in front of the house when two assailants killed him from behind with four bullets to the head and back.

Due to Petrović's position, longtime CEO of a large state-owned enterprise, as well as his political connections through SPS party, the murder sparked a lot of domestic and international reaction and press coverage.

Serbian Ministry of the Interior put out a press release saying: "This is undeniably a terrorist act committed against a high-ranking official of FR Yugoslavia's state-economy.

Serbian Minister of Justice Dragoljub Janković called Petrović's murder a "foreign-imported state terrorism of the very specific kind".

Western publications speculated about the reasons for Petrović's murder, especially in light of the fact that it came amidst a 2000 crime wave during which many prominent figures in the country got assassinated[5] including mobsters Željko "Arkan" Ražnatović (15 January), Radoslav "Bata Trlaja" Trlajić (25 February), Branislav "Dugi" Lainović (20 March), Zoran "Ćanda" Davidović (23 March), and Zoran "Skole" Uskoković (27 April), politicians Pavle Bulatović (7 February 2000) and Ivan Stambolić (25 August 2000), even two unsuccessful attempts on the life of opposition politician Vuk Drašković.