When News Breaks Winston-Salem Cops Shot

When news broke Wednesday morning that 2 Winston-Salem Police Officers had been shot news crews from around the Triad Converged on the scene at Peter's Creek Parkway and at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where the injured officers were taken.



That's where I first landed, with Shannon Smith taking the helm in front of the camera, delivering details, freshly gathered, trickling in.



After the noon I headed over to the Police Department for the 2:30 press conference where some of the details of what happened were going to be released.



Our Ops Manager Timmy Hawks and I carried, dragged and hauled 3 cases, 1 cable reel, a tripod and extension cords up to the third floor fo the PD so that we could use our portable digital transmitter to send a live signal back to the station to carry the press conference LIVE. Photojournalist Kenny Cravens manned the camera at the other end of a short cable run.



With that accomplished it was time to look ahead to the 5 and 6 o'clock newscasts.




Main Anchor Neill McNeill joined us across the street from the scene. The "us" was our Winston-Salem Crew, reporter Brent Campbell and photojournalist Kenny Cravens who were on scene from the get go....producing several stories through 5 and 6 o'clock.



Photojournalist Joe McCloskey (took a lot of these pix for me)and reporter Shelby Baker brought the second Live Truck and worked out of it to produce a few stories in short order.

Another Crew was still back at the Hospital keeping up with any updates at that location.



With 3 crews, 3 Live Trucks, Neil anchoring from the field and 1 recieve site in range we parked two of the trucks side by side and Brent went Live along side Neill on top of one truck as I shot from the other.



The view from on top of the truck was perfect to get a look down into the parking lot of the scene across the street....and other than the case with the LCD monitor taking a tumble all the way to the ground....everything went smoothly. (TV Still works if you can believe that!)



Live at 5, 5:30, and 6 with several teases in between and we were done....though I think this story will last for several News Cycles.

All in a Day's Drive Darn School Bus

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.