Residents from Soltys' former hometown of Shumsk in Western Ukraine described him as a shoemaker with violent and unpredictable behavior.
[2][1] ABC News reported that a newspaper from his homeland, the Kyiv daily Fakty (Facts), noted Soltys as being "abrupt" and sometimes violent prior to moving to the United States.
After he arrived in New York, he ended up jobless after a car accident injury and was collecting welfare assistance.
"[1] Shortly after his son was born, Nikolay left Ukraine and traveled to Binghamton, New York, where his parents had settled in the mid-1990s.
[4][5] During this time, over 90 percent of the recent Ukrainian refugees in the United States had successfully immigrated as an outcome of the Lautenberg Amendment.
As of 1995, priority was provided to designated groups of former Soviet citizens that the U.S. Congress had recognized as probable targets for persecution.
[4] The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department said they received a 911 call around 10 a.m. from a Scallop Court resident in North Highlands.
Maznik said Soltys' wife was three months pregnant and scheduled to start her new job at 9:30 a.m. as a cashier at the Good Neighbor store on College Oak Drive.
Responding officers found Lyubov in front of her neighbor's home fatally stabbed, with her throat slashed.
He drove to the home of his aging aunt and uncle in Rancho Cordova, also a suburb of Sacramento, approximately fifteen miles southeast from North Highlands.
[10] Before 11 a.m., authorities received a second 9-1-1 call requiring them to dispatch immediately to a residence at the 10000 block of Mills Station Road in Rancho Cordova.
A neighbor down the street, who was outside working on his car's brakes, saw the girl's blood covered body in the roadway and dialed 911 to report a hit-and-run.
[10] Tatyana's aunt Inna Yasinsky said that Dmitriy's mother witnessed part of the attack after hearing screams from her duplex home next door.
The elderly married couple - 74-year-old Galina Kukharskaya, and 75-year-old Peter Kukharskiy (the variations in the spelling of their last names distinguish gender) - were found dead on the second floor of their duplex.
Written on the back of the photo, of Sergey Soltys being held on his mother's lap, was a clue of where his son's body could be found.
"[10][12][13] The boy's body was discovered in a blood-filled cardboard box, that was made for a 37-inch television set, by Sacramento County sheriff personnel.
Prior to the discovery, sheriff officials had been searching along Watt Avenue, with helicopters and K-9 units, since the early morning hours of Tuesday.
"I thought there was some hope that we'd still find the kid alive," said Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas after the discovery of the toddler's body was released.
"[10][14] Soltys' abandoned Nissan Altima was found Monday night near the intersection of Auburn Boulevard and Madison Avenue.
When detectives found the photo, they were not sure the message was authentic or simply a lie to lead the official's investigation in a flawed direction.
[10] In the hours prior to the toddler's discovery, four Russian-speaking Sacramentans, made up of two sheriff deputies and two civilians, were the first persons to attempt to translate the photo's note.
[10] With this new information of the tower, Blanas ordered the entire department's day shift to remain on duty and to ready for the expanded search of Watt Avenue.
It was found in Placer County approximately half-a-mile from the corner of Baseline Road and Crowder Lane, within a couple of miles from where Watt Avenue ended.
The box was placed below a telecommunication switching tower atop a pile of garbage in a grove of oak trees.
Authorities announced that the boy's killing appeared to be from knife stabbings and the cutting off of the child's tongue, leading him to bleed profusely from his mouth.