Rumor had it that the one was killed in the synagogue and the other on the road to the town.

The Russian authorities regarded the crime as the collective work of the local Jewish community, or rather of several neighboring Jewish communities, "which had perpetrated this wicked deed by the verdict of their own tribunal." About eighty Kahal elders and other prominent Jews of Ushitza and adjacent towns, including two rabbis, were put on trial.

The case was submitted to a court-martial which resolved "to subject the guilty to an exemplary punishment." Twenty Jews were sentenced to hard labor and to penal military service, with a preliminary "punishment by _Spiessruten_ through five hundred men." [1] A like number were sentenced to be deported to Siberia; the rest were either acquitted or had fled from justice.

Many of those who ran the gauntlet died under the strokes, and are remembered by the Jewish people in Russia as martyrs.
[Footnote 1: Both the word and the penalty were introduced by Peter the Great from Germany.

The culprit was made to run between two lines of soldiers who whipped his bare shoulders with rods.