**By T.J. PIGNATARO, News Staff Reporter**

**8/20/01**

A man who was wounded while wrestling a rifle away from a gunman at the
Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Buffalo returned home from the
hospital Sunday insisting he wasn\'t a hero.

\"I do believe in God and I had help,\" Mann Pollock Jr. said Sunday
evening from his home in Panama. \"I feel I was put in that position at
the right time for just that reason. I was there at the right time and
in the right spot.\"

Pollock, 66, a part-time driver for the Chautauqua Area Rural
Transportation System, said he was out in his van with four of the six
veterans he had driven there from Jamestown on Friday when he decided to
go back into the hospital to check on his other two passengers.

Pollock was told one of the men was having X-rays and would be ready to
leave in 20 minutes.

\"As I walked out of the lobby, I saw the man come in with the gun,\"
Pollock said.

\"He had it right in my face. I grabbed for it with my left hand and
knocked it down to the side. He started pulling the trigger,\" he said.

Pollock said several bullets struck the floor and the walls in the lobby
of the outpatient clinic.

\"We tussled there for a bit. I just wanted to disarm him. I didn\'t
want him shooting just for the heck of it,\" Pollock said.

Pollock said the man, later identified by police as Samuel M. Bobo, 39,
of Buffalo, never said anything directly to him during the encounter but
it \"seemed like he was yelling.\"

\"He was just there, I knew I had to do something,\" Pollock said. \"He
had a mission he was on, and I think I interrupted his mission.\"

The 6-foot-tall, 190-pound Pollock was shot in the hand before he
managed to get the gun away. The gunman went down momentarily, Pollock
said, and came up with a knife. The assailant lunged at him and stabbed
him in the buttocks.

\"He hit me with such force I dropped the gun,\" Pollock said.

The assailant grabbed the gun but didn\'t get another shot off as the
ammunition in the gun must have been used, Pollock said. He stabbed John
Skyler, a medical records file clerk, in the chest and left.

At that point, Pollock said, he realized he was bleeding down his left
leg and began having pain in his left hip. He was treated in the
emergency room and admitted at the VA. He was released Sunday. In all,
three were injured in the attack: Pollock, Skyler and Gary Muck, a
parking lot attendant who was attacked first outside the facility at
about 11:20 a.m. Friday. Muck sustained a single gunshot wound to his
neck.

Muck and Skyler remained hospitalized late Sunday, but a hospital
administrator characterized their conditions as \"good.\"

Bobo is charged with assault with intent to murder a federal employee
and assault with a dangerous weapon.

Pollock, a retired City of Jamestown employee, husband and father of six
grown children, credited VA hospital staff for his quick recovery. He
plans \"to rest and take it easy\" for the next two weeks before his
next scheduled visit to the doctor. He plans to return to his job as
soon as doctors say he can.

Pollock doesn\'t see himself as a hero. \"I don\'t think of myself as a
hero. I feel I was in that position at the right time and I had help
(from God),\" Pollock said. \"There were people in that lobby. There\'s
no telling what he would have done.\"