News-Record.com

Normally I like to post the weekly WITW picture on Monday. But while I was on the phone with a local police chief for this story, this other story broke out. I was the relief shift for the first two N&R reporters who worked on the story. During my stint at Friendly Center (from about noon to 3 p.m.), I did a lot of things not related to WITW:

* Chatted with a couple of the local teevee reporters and camera folks
* Walked over to Barnes & Noble for some coffee
* Interviewed a mom and son who were inside the Old Navy store when the shooting happened, then filed a few inches of copy from the mall parking lot
* Told a woman that she needed to talk to the police (and not me) to get her car from the Wachovia parking lot
* Watched the cops mill around and later gather up much of the yellow crime scene tape
* Saw the fire truck roll up to clean up the blood
* Watched the Brinks truck drive away.

You'll note that (except for the random interview -- they walked up to me and started talking) there wasn't actually much journalism going on. I was there to make sure we didn't miss a police briefing, but there wasn't any. So it goes.

Here's a tip for anyone ever stuck at Friendly (and maybe any other large parking lots): The light poles have electrical outlets in them. That's something I didn't realize until about 2:45, and I wasn't going to risk my life (again) to fetch my laptop from the car.

That's the not-so-short story for the one-day delay in WITW. Speaking of ...