My impressions of the tragic events on the night of January 12-13 do not completely agree with the accounts as described in the press. So l'm giving my own account of the fragment of events that I personally witnessed. There probably aren't any photographs or television clips of that place, so I suggest listening to those who saw the sand truck get crushed. The testimony of eye-witnesses might compensate the lack of other information.
I went to the television tower after I had unexpectedly encountered a column of tanks and armored vehicles by the heating devices factory. The column was moving towards Šeškinė. (The last tank, No. 225 or 226, drove by at approximately 1:30 a.m.) The first column of tanks came to the TV tower from the direction of Cosmonaut Prospect. Their actions were aggressive. They were maneuvering, firing, using smoke screens - they attracted quite a crowd of television cameramen, photojournalists, and indignant people. I understood that they were trying to attract attention. (I see that nearly all of the events that took place there were documented.) I went to see what was going on elsewhere. I hadn't even reached the people protecting the tower when I heard tanks and armored vehicles approaching from the grove. I stopped on the slope by a sand truck. Two tanks appeared, followed by armored vehicles. When people saw the tanks, they rushed to the slope. They left the sidewalk to form a human chain. The chain stretched across the street and blocked it. The people were about 5-8 meters from the sand truck. A tank, with its size lights on, drove up to the human chain and stopped. Then it moved a few meters further. Some people fell down, and the people standing nearby tried to pull them out from under the tank's tracks. Others who were standing directly in front of the tank and leaning on it with their bodies tried to motion to the driver with their hands that they were there. After a few seconds, the tank made a resolute move, and those who could jumped aside. The two people who were in the very center of the chain (the one standing closer to the tower was about fifty, and from under his winter coat you could see a checked shirt. The other, standing on the residential side, was younger and was dressed a bit nicer and neater) were pressed against the sand truck and were crushed with it. After that the tank turned towards the slope. The second tank didn't go over to the crushed sand truck. lt tried to go up the slope, although it didn't succeed right away. The first tank and other armored vehicles turned towards the tower, and you could hear series of shots from there. This whole operation took place in the shadow of tanks standing nearby. The second tank moved down, turned around in the street, and crashed into the cars that were there. Then it moved up the slope, towards the tower. A car appeared with a loudspeaker from which a sweet voice announced that all the power had passed over into the hands of the „committee" and that they were „carrying humanity". People were asked to disperse. And all this began a few minutes after the people had been crushed. People standing by the sand truck were shouting: „There are people there!" Someone answered: „They've already been pulled out". In about 5 minutes, or perhaps a little later, a column of ambulances arrived from the same direction that the tanks had come from. They were surprisingly clean. Even later, some ambulances turned up from the direction of Cosmonaut Prospect. They all had someone to take. All that, I suppose, is well documented. (But you should examine the exclamations of the people, and their reports that wounded people were loaded into military vehicles.)
I suggest building an arch-shaped monument in memory of the victims (I mean those first victims who gave their lives blocking the way for the sudden attack of murderers) in that area. The top of it should show details of the actual scene: people being crushed by a tank with the inscription „l'm carrying humanity". The names of those beastly creatures resembling humans who proclaimed these words over a loudspeaker should be written on the side of the monument. The side on which the crushed people are depicted should read „For freedom! For Lithuania!".
Lithuania, 1991.01.13 : documents, testimonies, comments. - Vilnius : State Publishing Center, 1992, p. 103-104.