June 25, 2014

WBBH-TV

Clemmie Gorden was driving down Breeze Street in Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday when her car was shot at, WBBH-TV reported. According to the station, Gorden found a deputy in the neighborhood on a burglary call. No one has been arrested.

The (Fort Myers) News-Press shared an image of the car of Facebook:

Sadly, Gorden isn’t the first newspaper carrier to experience gunfire as she carried out her duties. In February, a mother and daughter delivering newspapers were shot at by the LAPD, Samantha Tata and Patrick Healy reported for KNBC. Emma Hernandez was shot twice, and Margie Carranza was injured by broken glass.

In October of last year, Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon wrote about a newspaper carrier in North Carolina who was shot at while trying to stop a robbery.

Neither Roseman nor the clerk was injured. Roseman tried to follow the suspect but was unsuccessful. “Luckily he’s not a good shot, because he fired at me four times and only one of them hit my car,” Roseman told (reporter Alex) Frick.

Newspaper carriers aren’t the only ones who’ve been shot at, though. In February, Beaujon wrote about KTRK-TV’s Demond Fernandez, who had a gun pulled on him while on camera. Last November, I wrote about WESH-TV’s Claire Metz, who had a gun pulled on her by a woman in Florida when Metz approached the woman’s home.

Related: No-knock policy bars TV station staff from rapping on crime suspects’ doors | Journalists talk about their own door-knocking experiences

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Kristen Hare teaches local journalists the critical skills they need to serve and cover their communities as Poynter's local news faculty member. Before joining faculty…
Kristen Hare

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