He Said He Shot a Bear. It Turned Out to Be a Man

Russian tycoon Igor Redkin now under house arrest
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 11, 2021 4:26 PM CDT
Russian Tycoon Shoots Man, Says He Mistook Him for Bear
Igor Redkin.   (Kamchatka Legislative Assembly)

One of Russia's richest lawmakers is under house arrest after killing a man and claiming he thought he was shooting at a bear. Igor Redkin, a fishing and aviation tycoon who sits in the Kamchatka regional assembly in Russia's Far East, resigned from Vladimir Putin's United Russia party after he admitted killing a 30-year-old man at a garbage dump earlier this month, the BBC reports. Authorities say he will be under house arrest for two months while a murder investigation continues. "A tragedy occurred, and I, Igor Vladimirovich Redkin, became an unwitting participant," the 55-year-old said in a statement to Russian media, per the Moscow Times.

He said he had learned that "a bear was wandering around a landfill in the village of Ozernovsky and was threatening local residents" and decided to scare it away. Redkin said he shot the "bear" at dusk—and "later learned that a local resident was wounded in the area around the same time and die in the hospital." He said he is "ready to bear the punishment, which will be decided by the court." According to Russian news agency Kam 24, there have been reports that Redkin was drunk at the time of the incident and had gone to the dump to practice shooting. (More Russia stories.)

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