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I was working on a story today about a guy who shot someone to death at his christmas party after being fired. Now, we found some stuff on an internet chatroom that could have explained the killer's motive (a guy with the accused's name and living here bitching about his boss being an evil bastard and firing him). But we weren't sure if the poster was the same guy as the accused. So, I kept digging. I read a bunch of this guy's posts and more or less figured we could verify it was him if we could cross-reference some of the information in the posts with someone who knew him. I wheeled and dealed a bit with the cops to get some info about where the guy was from.
Meanwhile TV was working on it too.
So, the company that suffered the shooting issued a release, in it they left a contact number for a PR guy. So, I get on the phone to try to explain to my TV colleague that I'm gonna call the PR and try to get some information. Her response?
"Why talk to him, he's a PR guy. He wasn't there, he won't be traumatized or anything."
There was a pause, I said, "I'm not looking for someone who was traumatized, I'm looking for someone who can verify information."
So, I have to EXPLAIN to her that just maybe if we ask the PR if, for instance, the shooter's wife died of cancer recently, if he suffered from epilipsy... etc, then we have our match... or we do an obit search and see if anyone that could have been his wife shows up and see if it says what town she's from, we may have a match. The PR guy may know as the shooter WAS an ex-employee. And that being able to produce a story on this guy's possible motive and such was a hell of a lot better than just asking some witnesses how "scary" it was.
She says... "Yeah, I didn't think of that!"
This is a 25-year veteran, folks.
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