News Crews Robbed, Pistol-Whipped While Covering Killing On San Francisco's Touristy Embarcadero
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Two TV news crews were robbed at gunpoint in San Francisco Thursday morning, the same spot where a woman was shot and killed a day earlier.
KCBS' Holly Quan reports KTVU and KNTV were covering a story at Pier 14 when robbers threw a KNTV cameraman to the ground and pistol-whipped him during a live broadcast by competitor KTVU at about 6 a.m. No shots were fired, but an ammo magazine from a gun was left behind. No other injuries were reported.
The robber drove away in a black BMW 7-series with two cameras and two tripods from stations KTVU and KNTV. The losses are estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars.
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At the same location on Wednesday night, a fatal shooting took the life of a 31-year-old woman.
She was transported to San Francisco General Hospital where she was later pronounced dead, according to police.
Officers flooded the area and detained a subject matching the description of a "possible person of interest" on the corner of Embarcadero and Townsend. That individual is currently being investigated, according to police.
Neither of the news crews hit by the armed robber Thursday morning were accompanied by security guards, Quan said. Many local crews, including CBS San Francisco partner KPIX 5, have used security guards regularly while covering stories in Oakland in response to similar robberies in recent years, but practice has been less frequent in news in San Francisco, where such crimes have not been as frequent.
