View pictures from the shooting incident in 1993

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. The early 1990′s were a tumultuous time in Russia. Russian lawmakers were testing the limits of the Kremlin’s power, when President Boris Yeltsin abruptly dissolved parliament in October of 1993. Yeltsin’s power-grab sent angry protesters into the streets, a handful of the demonstrators were armed. They’d squared off against Yeltsin’s elite troops outside Moscow’s central television towers when fighting broke out. The BBC’s Robert Parsons was there.

ROBERT PARSONS: We’re having to run now, the government forces, government armored personnel carriers are smashing down the barriers. We’re only forced, and we’re on fire.  Having to take cover by a lake near the television station.

JEB SHARP: Also caught up in the melee was Otto Pohl, then a 24-year-old photojournalist working for the New York Times. A bullet from Yeltin’s troops grazed Pohl’s skull, another punctured his lung, but he survived. And he recently returned to Russia to try to find the man who shot him. Otto, take us back to that moment in 1993, set us down in that crowd outside Moscow’s central TV towers.

OTTO POHL: Well, the protest had been going on for about two weeks, and so, it had taken on this sort of odd air of, almost a combination of street carnival, everybody out, people gawking, a lot of old babushki. But at the same time, riot troops in the background, and a few people had been killed. So there was definitely real edge to things.

JEB SHARP: And what triggered the shooting in that particular incident?

OTTO POHL: What happened was that one of the protestors, and there was a few armed protestors among the crowd, I’m gonna say, maybe 20 among several thousand protestors. And one of them had a rocket propeller grenade, a bazooka. And they fired that, I believe, into the TV tower, killing one of the soldiers that had taken up station inside. And in response they just opened fire.

JEB SHARP: Really opened fire, I mean, not just sort of one volley of fire, but it sounds like a lot shooting. You were hit, how were you saved?

OTTO POHL: The shooting went on for several hours, tanks ultimately rolled into the area. The moment that bazooka exploded, I hit the deck along with most of the other people. Everybody was either scared and fell down, or was literally blown over by the explosion. And the gunfire went over my head for up to two hours. And then, there was actually a man named Mike Duncan, an American, who crawled up to me to try to pull me out, and I’d been watching him pull out other people. He crawl up to me and was trying to pull me out, saying, oh, we’ll get you out safely, when I was hit. And then he got really concerned, you know, I’m sort of breathing through my chest with a sucking chest wound. And he’s saying, I will save you, just don’t pass out on me. He starts counting, he says one, I say two, he says three, I say four. We get to about twenty and then he stopped talking after another volley of fire. And I kind of lifted my head up and I saw that he had been hit through the head. But fortunately, other people who I still don’t know who they were, I have a photo of them, but don’t know who they were, but came and pulled me out.

JEB SHARP: And just to be clear, your would be rescuer, Mike Duncan died?

OTTO POHL: Yes.

JEB SHARP: And then you decide much, much later, in 2007, just two years ago, you’re gonna return on a personal mission to find out who shot you. Did you find that out? What happened?

OTTO POHL: As you might imagine, asking questions like that in Russia, not that popular these days. But I was able to find the commander leading the troops that night, and he was fortunately very amenable to my search. In fact, said, “Oh, you must be the guy who’s camera we found.” So, there was an immediate, almost nostalgic bond that we formed, and he then in turn introduced me to a bunch of the soldiers, including one who had been right inside the building where Mike and I had lain in front of, and who remembered us. He was like, “Oh, were you the one who was wearing the baseball hat?” And it was Mike. And he’s also the one, I should add, who wouldn’t let us leave. We kept asking between volleys of gunfire if we could leave and, you know, he kept yelling back at us and sort of shooting in our direction.

JEB SHARP: It’s jarring to read. At first you have this surge of anger upon coming across these men, and then, as you say, you end up hanging out with them in an almost nostalgic atmosphere. You say you’re sort of sharing a drink and examining photographs. And, I guess I wanna know more about how you shifted from the quest to find the people, the person, the anger, and then the kind of almost acceptance that you were all in it together.

OTTO POHL: There is an absolute element of anger there. On the other hand, I think also meeting him, or meeting them, ’cause I can’t say this was the guy who definitely shot me. But, at the same time there was a real sense of, here’s one of the very few people on this earth who can understand what that night was like. And he was 26 years old, he was young, he was scared, it was his first firefight. On some banal level, he didn’t mean it personally. And I’ve told the story so many times throughout the years, and for everybody else, they kind of look at me with this sort of slack jaw, slight non-comprehension. But here’s a guy I can talk to, and he remembers the sites and the smells and the moments, we share that bond, as silly as that sounds.

JEB SHARP: And how does Russia remember this incident? I mean, was there any justice done in the sense of consequences for security forces shooting unarmed protestors? Or how is viewed, remembered, situated?

OTTO POHL: Essentially they haven’t dealt with it at all. There is a very small remembrance service every October at the square where the victim’s parents and relatives show up. But, the investigation was shut down about a half year after the shooting, everybody got amnesty, the people who did the shooting, the military leaders they all got medals. And, at this point, the country just moved on, and not in a healthy way, but in a way of just brushing everything under the rug. Again, I think it says a lot about the lack of civil society in Russia today.

JEB SHARP: And back to your own story, and your own quest here, did you actually end up having any kind of epiphany? I mean, you said you went seeking truth and resolution, and didn’t necessarily find it. How have you come to think about what happened to you and the fact of going back?

OTTO POHL: What happened to me was just a thread in the entire fabric. In a way there’s four more questions that I have right now. I guess you always set out looking for the sibyl, sort of the moment where everything becomes clear, and usually on these kind of journeys it ends up being more complex.

JEB SHARP: Freelance journalist, Otto Phol, is based in Bozeman, Montana. His piece Hunting Down the Man Who Shot Me is in the latest issue of Men’s Journal. For a link go to our website. Otto, thanks again for sharing the story.

OTTO POHL: Thanks so much.

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