When Joe Avery had no news to report about Yale graduate student Annie Le’s death, the national news media made its own — by rushing the police spokesman and injuring a TV producer.
The incident happened outside police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday.
That was supposed to be the hour at which the public would learn a key fact in the unfolding, sordid mystery of how the 24 year-old graduate student ended up dead inside a basement wall at a Yale medical building. The state chief medical examiner had announced he would release a report on the cause of death.
Instead, the examiner announced the report wouldn’t come out Tuesday after all.
Bummer.
Still, there were deadlines to meet. Police spokesman Avery obliged by coming outside headquarters to repeat the “nothing new” news on camera for the reporters stationed along a row of network news trucks parked along Union Avenue. He did so on the landing to the concrete steps leading to the police headquarters entrance. He walked through several iterations of the “no news” line.
Meanwhile, the pack of reporters pressed closer to him.
At that point, a member of the throng rushed forward, bumping into someone else. In a chain reaction, 32 year-old NBC News producer Alycia Savvides “felt this huge crash” from a cameraman and his equipment. Savvides was leaning down holding a microphone to capture Avery’s words.
“I saw stars. I swear to God,” Savvides (pictured) said afterwards in the NBC truck, her arm in a sling. “I was down. I couldn’t stand up. The pain was really bad.”
Eventually she thought she could get up. “You have to sit here,” the cops told her. They called an ambulance.
She was checked inside the ambulance, given pain medication and the sling. An hour later, she was bruised and still feeling the pain.
Meanwhile, cops dressed down the national reporters.
Sgt. Anthony Zona informed the reporters that they were lucky to have permission to station their vans on the street in front of the station. If they can’t behave, they would lose that permission, he said.
(Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to watch snippets of his conversation, as well as Savvides’ account.)
“If they [police spokesmen] come out and tell you something, it can’t be a bum rush, OK? Fair enough? “ Zona said. “We don’t want anyone getting hurt, all right? … Somebody could have gotten seriously hurt. Those cameras are heavy.”
Spokesman Avery marveled at the scene.
“I’ve never seen a bunch of people so out of control in my life,” he said, his head shaking.
Perhaps,the press will now learn civility now that one of their own was injured in this feeding frenzy