Watching police cars chase bad guys live on national TV is something Americans have gotten used to, and Fox News viewers were not surprised when anchor Shepard Smith interrupted his Studio B broadcast last September and cut to the network’s Phoenix affiliate’s coverage of cops chasing a man who had carjacked a vehicle.
“Well, you know, you wait for the end of these things, and then you worry about how they may end,” Smith told the live audience, after the carjacker left the interstate highway 75 miles west of Phoenix, drove onto a dirt path and stumbled out of the vehicle. “This makes me a little nervous.”
A few seconds later, the man raised a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger as the shocked Fox anchor yelled to producers to cut away from the video: “Get off! Get off! … Get off it!”
The dead man was identified as Jodon Romero, 33, who had a long criminal record and had only been released from prison three months earlier. The mother of three of Romero’s has now filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court claiming that Fox News inflicted “emotional distress” on the children:
According to the lawsuit, a psychologist found that the boys have “approximately equivalent symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that included flashbacks, repeated thoughts and feelings associated with viewing the video of their father shooting himself in the head, re-experiencing trauma, sleep disturbance, and intrusive thoughts.”
The boys will require “long-term psychiatric and/or psychological treatment,” the lawsuit claims . . .
Erick Wemple of the Washington Post has a PDF copy of the lawsuit. With all disclaimers against the infliction of emotional distress, here’s video of the Sept. 28, 2012 incident:
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Awwww. ;)
Move on. Frivolous lawsuit. Nothing to see here. Waste of Web Space. Waste of court time.
Looks like Caroline Kennedy can sue every newspaper, school and TV station in America for continually broadcastng her father's death.