Businessman shot dead in center of Moscow
MOSCOW. May 29 (Interfax) - A businessman was killed as a gunman opened fire at a car in central Moscow on Thursday, an Investigative Committee spokeswoman said, while an unofficial law enforcement source said the killer's target had been a woman sitting next to the entrepreneur and the bullets had missed her.
The gunman, who was riding a scooter and using a pistol with a silencer, tried to escape after firing at the businessman's Mercedes on Pokrovka Street but was knocked down by a car and arrested, the Investigative Committee spokeswoman, Viktoria Tsiplyonkova, told Interfax.
The press service of the city police authority told Interfax that the arrest had been made by "the deputy chief for operations of the police department of Krasnoselsky district, who was off duty and driving his private car along Pokrovka Street."
The businessman was wounded and died on his way to the hospital.
A law enforcement source interviewed by Interfax named him as Viktor Katanyan and said he had owned several companies, some of which operated in the construction and real estate management sectors.
Another law enforcement source told Interfax that Katanyan's death was an error. The source said the target was a businesswoman who had headed a bank a while before and was sitting next to Katanyan, and that the bullets had gone wide of their mark.