Chicago TV crew covering armed robberies robbed at gunpoint
A Chicago TV news crew reporting on armed robberies was robbed themselves Monday morning.
The two-man Univision Chicago crew was setting up a live shot in the city’s Wicker Park neighborhood around 5 a.m. Monday when three men wearing ski masks and carrying guns approached them, police said.
The armed men demanded money, then snatched two bags of equipment, the photographer’s backpack and the camera used to film the story on robberies, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“Mainly it was personal items, and they took a camera,” Univision Chicago vice president Luis Godinez told the Chicago Tribune.
The victims were identified only as two men ages 42 and 28. They were not injured in the attack, and Univision did not identify the two men to protect their privacy. No suspects have been arrested.
Univision Chicago had planned the report on several armed robberies in the city’s West Town area, just northwest of the downtown Loop, for a Monday morning newscast.
After the robbery, the station scrapped the segment and ran with a general story about the incidents on its 5 p.m. broadcast, which included only a passing mention of their own run-in.
“As a journalist, you never want to be the story, right? You’re reporting on the story but you never think that you can become the story. That’s not why we do this,” the reporter told local news outlet Block Club Chicago. He called it “total irony.”
It was the second time this month a reporter was robbed in Chicago. On Aug. 8, a photographer at local ABC affiliate WLS was assaulted and robbed while preparing to cover a press conference on the city’s West Side.
With News Wire Services