In the video, 3 Pitssburgh Police Officers Killed; Suspect In Custody: Suspect's friend speaks out,
[also available here], a man who goes by the name of 'Eddie' and has been indentified as by WXPI as Richard 'Poplawski's best friend Edward Perkovic', is interviewed by several reporters on the scene after the fatal shooting of three police officers in Pittsburgh.
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The following is an accurate transcription of the video. There may be some very minor mistakes or omissions due to garbled cross-talk. Video is 3:37 long.
Eddie: "He called me up at about 830 9 oclock in the morning and said 'Eddie im gonna die today' i heard gunshots in the background, um, he hung up the phone and I couldnt get a hold o him since. and I had proceeded to call & come up here to negotiate with him.
KOKA Reporter: Did you get to talk to him at all?
Eddie: Actually i didnt get to talk to him because his cousin talked to him and got him to surrender before I got into the picture as far as negotiations.
Q What can you tell us about him?
Eddie: Umm. he was a pretty straightforward guy. he was never on any drugs he never did anything out of line he wasn't involved in any gangs, any militias, he just believed in his right to bear arms; he believed that hard economic times were, you know, gonna put forth a, you know, gun bans. That sort of thing. ..he uh, he basically believed in what our forefathers had put before us and thought that it was being distorted by the, you know, zionist control of the government, and he didn't believe in that. Uh Also, I don't think that the way he went about solving it was the right way to do it though.
Reporter: And did he have a lot of, I take it he had a lot of guns? He collected guns and things like that?
Eddie: he only had about 4 firearms
Q. How do you know him?
Eddie: I've been best friends with him since I was born.
Q. What do you think of what happend here?
Eddie: I think it was an awful, you know, tragedy, and as bad as it feels, you know, to see your best friend in a situation like that you also got to take into account the innocent lives that were lost here today and uh, that's something that can never be, you know, never can be justified.
Q. What do you think made him sn- uh, did what he did?
Eddie: Well there was a domestic dispute in the household and i guess the police came to take his firearms away from him. and he always said that if anyone tried to take his firearms he was gonna stand by what his forefathers told him to do and defend himself. And I guess he went about it the wrong way.
Q. And that's it. You didn't get a chance to talk to him.. when you talked to him what did you tell him?
[1:50]
Eddie: I told him Rich please don't do this too many people love you, too many people care about you.. this doesnt need to go any further than it is right now.
Reporter: Thanks so much for talking to us.
Other Reporter: Did he call you?
Eddie: he called me. about 8:30/ 9 O'Clock in the morning/ yeah He was already shot at that time. he was shot once in the chest and once in the leg but his bulletproof vest had saved him from getting shot in the chest.
[2:17]
Female reporter: did he ever say anything to you, like ever indicate any signs that made you.. concerned or made you..
Eddie: He just basically told me he didn't like the zionist control over our government, he didnt like that there was about to be military policing, he didnt believe, in the fact that there was about to be a gun ban, he he he didnt like anything that was going on in the political forefront and uh, he was basically, very politically active. And he didn't agree with what was going on right now in the united states of America. What made him snap, I have no clue.
Female reporter: So he never.. there was never. when he was expressinng his opinion, there was never , something that went off inside, that made you thought that... that there could be a situation like this
Eddie: No just yesterday he was talking about like when are we watching the penguins game.i mean This.. this was a complete surprise to me and my family and everyones families that were friends with him, that we ever suspected, something like this from him.
Male reporter 2: What did he say if someone came to take his guns he going to do?
Eddie: He was gonna defend himself.
Q. What about this domestic dispute..
Eddie: I don't know anything about the domestic duspite. all i know is that i heard there was a domestic dispute at the house. and i know, sometimes him and his mother sometimes have frequent domestic disputes where police are called onto the scene . never before has anything like this happened.
