On the night of January 12, my friend and I were keeping vigil at Parliament. When it was announced over the radio that tanks were coming towards the tower, we got into the car and went there as fast as possible. More cars were also going in that direction. We caught up with a convoy of armored personnel carriers while going up the hill from Žvėrynas to Karoliniškės. One of the vehicles had broken down. Passing it, we began to catch up with a convoy of tanks. Once we got to the intersection by the Press House, we could see tanks rumbling along Cosmonaut Prospect towards the tower. At the intersection, we got into the wrong lane. Coming up to the TV center, we headed towards the school. We left the car in the school yard and ran to the tower. There were a lot of people there. The air was filled with smoke and the stench of diesei fuel. We hardly had time to look around before a convoy of military vehicles appeared from the direction of the kindergarten - there were three tanks (as far as I could tell) in the front. There was a sand truck parked across the street by the kindergarten. Another one was parked at the intersection which turned to the hill. The convoy stopped at the first sand truck. Young people started to climb onto the tank. After standing there for a while, the tank turned left, and crushing a car, it caught the dumper of the sand truck. The tank tore the dumper off, pushed the truck a little, and then drove back into the street. Young people came running from all directions and stood in the street to block the tank's way. The tank stopped, but soon it began to jerk back and forth, hoping that the people would withdraw from fear. But nobody backed off. Then it drove right into the crowd. Everybody scattered, but two young men jumped onto the front of the tank and stayed there until the tank sped up and turned to the other sand truck. I was standing a little higher up on the hill and watched as one guy jumped off the tank right in front of the sand truck, while the other man climbed higher so he wouldn't be crushed. This time the tank didn't stop, it just slowed down a bit before it crawled straight at the sand truck and began to crush it. I ran to the tank but I couldn't see where the second guy had disappeared. The tank crushed the sand truck, turned towards the TV center, and stopped there. I ran up to the truck and saw a person lying behind it. Running over to him, I glanced to the right and saw the front of another tank. lt crossed my mind that it might fire. But this thought disappeared immediately. I grabbed the man by his jacket and began to drag him off the street. I felt like I was in a dream - I was dragging him, and he was slipping out of his jacket. I didn't see anything except his feet and the brown shoes that were coming off of them. lt was as if his feet didn't have bones. After I had dragged him a bit further off the road, more men came running over. I bent over the man's face and saw his lips moving. I began to shout: „Where's the ambulance!? Where's the ambulance!?", but of course nobody heard me. I bent down again and saw his half-opened eyelids and the whites of his eyes. lt occurred to me that he was already dead. Then about six men took him in their hands and carried him somewhere across the street. I stayed standing there. Looking around, I saw the second tank standing next to the first one. Then a third tank drove up to the crushed sand truck, but didn't run it over. lt turned to the right and caught hold of the cars parked near the sidewalk. Then the tank turned left, crushed a car which wasn't close by at all - in fact it wasn't even by the street - and went up the hill. lt was followed by a convoy of armored personnel carriers and trucks full of paratroopers. In the rear was a military vehicle with a loudspeaker, from which roughly the following statements were transmitted in Lithuanian: „There is no more Parliament or Government. All power has been taken over by the National Salvation Committee... People, please disperse, we don't need any victims... we don't need a fratricidal war..." Only these fragments stuck in my mind.

Lithuania, 1991.01.13 : documents, testimonies, comments. - Vilnius : State Publishing Center, 1992, p. 97-98.