Russian pensioner kills neighbour with James Bond-style pen gun

 

A Russian pensioner has shot dead his neighbour with a "spy's pen-gun" reminiscent of the weapons issued to James Bond.
The unnamed 83-year-old man opened fire on his victim at the Friendship dacha settlement in Irkutsk region in Siberia when they quarrelled over a garage.
Police said they had captured the man, who fled by car after the incident on August 10.
The pensioner, reportedly a former soldier, carried out the killing with a single-shot 5.6mm calibre firearm the size and shape of a fountain pen.
James Bond was issued a similar weapon which fired an explosive dart in the 1983 film, Never Say Never Again starring Sean Connery. The fictional MI6 agent used it to shoot the evil nurse, Fatima Blush.
Real Soviet-era spies were known to use their own curious weapons: Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov died in 1978, probably after an agent fired a poison pellet into his leg from the tip of an umbrella close to Waterloo Bridge.
The Siberian "spy pen-pistol" was capable of firing a bullet through the trunk of a tree, according to a report in the Russian government newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Local media said the alleged murderer had shot Andrei Melnikov, 52, a retired police major, after the two had argued over construction of an access road which prevented the older man from parking his Volga saloon in his garage.
It is thought the pen-gun, which had a spring-loaded firing pin, was handmade. Last year, two lathe operators were arrested at a tank repair factory in the eastern Amur region of Russia. The pair were found to be part of a team producing the weapons and selling them for about 5,000 roubles (£100) each on the black market.