A reporter with ABC station WATN in Memphis, Tennessee, was interviewing a local woman about a rise in crime when a drive-by shooting broke out in their vicinity and they work for cover.
“We report on the city’s crime problem almost every day, but it hit home for one of our crew today while doing a story about crime in Whitehaven,” said Want anchor Richard Ransom. “We were interviewing a woman about Memphis PD’s plan to enforce the city’s teen curfew when out of nowhere a shooting happened across the street.”
Yolanda Cooper Sutton was texting her name to the on-scene reporter, Jay Jones, when a hail of bullets stopped her in her tracks and dropped her out of camera range.
“Get down, get down, get down, just be down and get down,” he told Jones calmly. “Okay. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Stay down and get down.
Fox News’ John Roberts spoke with community leader Cooper Sutton who said he was talking with the reporter about the peak of crime in America. “It’s been extremely difficult in Memphis, Tennessee with juvenile delinquency and the gun laws that have been established in the state of Tennessee. It’s absolutely reckless,” Sutton said.
He told how the interview was just getting ready to begin when everything went wrong. Cooper Sutton said, “All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you hear gunshots and then you see us falling to the ground.”, ,I knew it was the sound of gunfire because it rings regularly around town like church bells. All I know is – now here in Memphis it’s a fire drill to practice getting down because the offense is rampant. And I just knew to get down because a moving target is a hit target. And so, the best thing for anybody is to just lay down. And that was just instinct. Just my instincts kicked in immediately.
