On the way back from gathering the newest video and information about Sunday's Carthage Shootings, Nicole Ferguson and I were face with a challenge that many people face if they're anywhere on the road in the early afternoon....a school bus...and this school bus stopped 4 times...in a quarter mile.
I was beginning to worry that we might not make it back to the station in time for our six o'clock story slot. But the bus took the next left and we were good to go.
It's a good thing. We didn't leave Carthage until after 3 o'clock because of all the hustling we had to do just to flesh out a story in the first place. Being day 3 after the fact, most of the nuts and bolts information has been said. The key players who can or will talk have been talked to and the rest of the people who may have something to do with the case won't or can't talk.
Take the 911 operator who took the calls from the nursing home. She handled herself so camly that we wanted to give her 15 seconds of fame. Her bosses said no.
And the ex-wife of the the gunman, she had given interviews in previous days, but she said one of the other news crew had ambushed her for that interview and as nice as she was and as nice as Nicole could be, the former Mrs. Stewart declined our request for 2 minutes of face time.
A neighbor who knew Robert Stewart 10 years ago reluctantly went on the record for us and that gave us a basis for a story but we thought we could do a little better.
When we got back to town from Stewart's old neighborhood we noticed white ribbons popping up all over the place. A quick step into one of the businesses and we soon discovered that the local florist was making ribbons and giving them out all over town.
A quick glance across the street and, believe it or not, there she was. We followed her around for about 20 minutes as she popped in on businesses and hung more ribbons. Now we had a story. Something a little different and a nice way to wrap up this 3rd day of coverage.
