The joy of being a reporter, take 2

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Below you'll see a story I wrote today that we posted online first, thanks to the fact that our paper doesn't come out again until Friday. It's the story of the taser tape, of the man who taped it, of the lawyer representing Zofia Cisowski -- and it will be watched many, many times once it's released tomorrow, even though everyone watching it will know they are watching a man die.

Interviewing Paul Pritchard, the man who made the tape of the last moments of Robert Dziekanski's life, was brutal. He has his own story; he was at the airport because he had flown home from China to be with his dad, who has a serious illness. He missed his connection in San Francisco, caught the last seat on a later flight, got into Vancouver too late to catch a bus to the ferries to go home to Victoria.

He's only 25 and he has seen things no one, especially someone that young, should ever have to witness.

And here's proof I'm getting old; I really didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to hear him describe the tape. I really wanted my colleague at our Richmond paper to do the interview but he couldn't fit it in because he was too busy trying to chase down how we could get our hands on this tape once it was released.

But I talked to him. And I listened to him. And I guess the mother part of me felt so awful for him because he was describing for the umpteenth time something that he will live with forever.

I'd like to think I made a bit of a difference for him, too, because he asked if I knew the story of Robert's long wait at the airport, of Zofia looking for him and I told him I knew it too well. That seemed to satisfy him and he went on to complain about so much of the media that has focused on him and his tape and forgotten that there is a woman who is so much more damaged by all of this than he is. A mother who has lost her only son. A mother who has lost pretty much all her hopes.

Paul was angry, too. He had just this day learned of the fundraising going on for Zofia to take Robert's ashes back to Poland. He had asked lawyers involved about fundraising. He had offered to sell the tape and give the money to Zofia. No one told him that she has nothing left. That her friends here in Kamloops are trying to raise money to pay for Robert's memorial on Saturday and for Zofia's flight to Poland.

Paul was angry the story had become all about him. Because he knows what the story is. He's losing someone he dearly loves in his family too; not quickly but in the way only a serious ailment (he doesn't want the word used) can cause.

None of it seems fair. And I just want this story to end.

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