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Terrible news — not long after after Kansas City police exchanged shots with a man in south Kansas City, a man fitting the same description walked into a nearby mall in south Kansas City and opened fire.
I was watching WDAF, Fox 4, the Fox-owned affiliate, at 4:42 p.m. when it broke into NASCAR race coverage to cut to its live reporter with the news that five people were shot and two people dead. In the background, a grisly image of the Starbucks' plate glass windows all shot out.
Anchor Tom Lawrence added a detail that revealed the kinds of choices news producers must make when news breaks: The station had waited until Jeff Gordon could safely be declared the win of that afternoon's NASCAR race before they broke in with the news. (In fairness to Fox 4, there was several minutes of mostly waiting around for the race to restart, during which one must assume they would've interrupted had the reporter been on the scene.)
KMBC-9 ran a crawl at 4:44 saying that "multiple crews" were headed to the scene and that "there is no known information at this time," which wasn't true if you were watching Fox or reading KansasCity.com (where the first story posted at 4:38 p.m.). On Monday, KMBC news director Michael Sipes added: "We broke into coverage at 4:22pm with Larry Moore, Johnny Rowlands in the Helicopter and Marcus Moore on a live van and Chris Nagus on the phone. Coverage then stopped at 4:33pm, because we needed crews to work the story out there."
At 5 p.m., three out of four stations were live on the scene.
KCTV-5's Tom Wait reported four shot and two dead including the shooter, and claimed KCTV had been on the scene first. While he talked, KCTV showed electric video taken earlier, buttressing Wait's claim: cop cars racing into Ward Parkway center, cops running around, as well as video of a dozen red-shirted Target employees gathered nervously in the parking lot. (CNN would make heavy use of this video later on.) Photog Andrew Zimmerman took that. Then came the eyewitnesses, the most compelling of them Queea Miller, a woman parked just two cars down from the suspect, who ducked in terror and listened as the popping of the firearm grew more distant, and was soon replaced by the sound of police sirens, after which time she and her daughter dashed into a Pier 1 store. Another eyewitness said he heard shots and a man running by with blood on his face.
KCTV's Surae Chinn stood on the mall's north end, with Target as her backdrop. She and others would comment on what a wild, chaotic scene had developed at the mall. And soon details would trickle out that the terror had spread rapidly to all corners of the Ward Parkway Center in just a few minutes, as the shooter roamed the corridor.
Our first clue of this was the news stations could not immediately nail down where the shooting, or shootings, actually took place. While Fox 4 said it was a Starbucks, video of the scene clearly showed it was a mall entrance, not a store entrance, whose glass was shattered by gun blasts. The eyewitnesses that spoke on the phone and on camera to news stations all came from the Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse, which is to the south of the entry door. Still others inside the Target store, at the north end of the mall, and the Dillard's store at the south end, would report hearing gunshots. A single, fairly short corridor connects the stores in Ward Parkway Center.
Facts poured in from eyewitnesses. The cineplex at the other end of the mall shut down, police officers running in and telling moviegoers to get out. Target employees gathered in the parking lot, all safe and accounted for. An "air-conditioned city bus" became an interview area, as eyewitnesses were herded in to talk with police. Frantic parents arrived at the mall from all directions, looking for loved ones. Reporters and anchors begged onlookers to stay away from Ward Parkway Shopping Center.
Helicopters buzzed overhead. KMBC-9 and Fox 4 started covering the crime scene from overhead. They would be joined by KCTV's chopper and, eventually, KSHB. KMBC-9 went to a split scene so it could continue covering the NBA playoffs ... and I had a flashback to the white Bronco chase.
KSHB, aka "NBC Action News," was MIA until 5:20, as the station continued to cover a double overtime hockey game. And then all they had, at first, was a single reporter at the gas station where the police officer was shot.
KSHB news director Debbie Bush emailed Monday: "Just so you know…we broke into the hockey game (I have the angry e-mails to prove it) between 4:30 and 4:45 with live pictures and reporter from the mall. We were not MIA."
By 5:26 p.m., every station was taking a breather. Even KCTV signed off "a little bit early," said co-anchor Karen Fuller, in order to get through a backlog of commercials ... before returning at 5:30 to continue covering the carnage. As I said, I don't envy the choices news producers have to make.
Continue reading "Shooting in Kansas City: Getting the facts" »
But he's going to appear in person this week at his annual Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana, Illinois, anyway. "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my Festival," he writes on his website.
I like this picture. It strips all the poignancy from the subject, and reduces the pity felt by the viewer. It's how I would like to look if I went through the post-operation hell that Ebert went through last summer, when attempts to replace the mandible removed during salivary gland cancer surgery failed.
If you're a longtime reader, you know exactly why Ebert refuses to hide himself from the public eye, and is dismissing friends who've urged him to stay away until he's completely healed. Back in 1999, his friend Gene Siskel died without so much as notifying a soul outside his immediate family. Gene was in denial, as I recounted in a memoir of my afternoon with him, and afterward, Ebert was heard to be telling anyone within earshot, "If I get cancer, I'm telling everyone!" He did, and he did.
Take your time, Rog. Tony Scott is a great fill-in for you on the show -- but he's no replacement.
