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A Chicago tv information crew reporting on a string of robberies ended up robbed themselves after they had been accosted at gunpoint by three armed males sporting ski masks.
Spanish-language station Univision Chicago mentioned a reporter and photographer had been filming simply earlier than 5 a.m. Monday in Chicago’s West City neighborhood when three masked males brandishing firearms robbed them, taking their tv digicam and different gadgets.
“They had been approached with weapons and robbed. Primarily it was private gadgets, they usually took a digicam,” Luis Godinez, vp of stories at Univision Chicago, instructed the Chicago Tribune.
Godinez mentioned the information crew was filming a narrative about robberies within the West City neighborhood that was slated to run on the morning information. He mentioned the footage they shot was within the stolen digicam, and the story by no means made it on the air.
Chicago police recognized the victims as a 28-year-old man and 42-year-old man. Police mentioned the pair was exterior when the three males drove up in a grey sedan and black SUV. After the armed robbers took gadgets from the information crew they fled of their autos.
No accidents had been reported and nobody is in custody, police mentioned.
Godinez mentioned Univision Chicago, the native TV affiliate of worldwide media firm TelevisaUnivision, shouldn’t be disclosing the names of the reporter and photographer to guard their privateness.
“They’re OK, and we’re engaged on it collectively as a group,” he mentioned.
The episode was the second theft this month involving a Chicago information crew, after a WLS-TV photographer was assaulted and robbed on Aug. 8 whereas making ready to cowl a weekday afternoon information convention on Chicago’s West Facet, the station reported.
The robberies prompted the Nationwide Affiliation of Broadcast Workers and Technicians Native 41, which represents TV photographers in Chicago, to warn in regards to the rising security threats to those that cowl the information.
“Our information photographers and reporters present an important public service in protecting our neighborhood knowledgeable. We’re dedicated to creating positive that their security comes first,” Raza Siddiqui, president of the union native, mentioned in an announcement.
Siddiqui instructed the Chicago Solar-Occasions that a few of the information stations affiliated with the union deliberate to take further security steps, together with assigning safety to some TV crews.
He mentioned the union is arranging a security assembly for members to “voice a few of their issues that they could have from the streets” and to find out what the union can do to supply assist for its members.
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