Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Company lays off reporter injured in 2008 City Hall shootings
Remember that City Council meeting shooting last year where five people were killed and a metro reporter was shot in the hand by an enraged citizen?Well, the reporter, Todd Smith, was laid off last week.
Smith was a metro reporter covering Webster Groves and Kirkwood at the time of the February, 2008, Kirkwood shootings and went to Kirkwood City Hall to cover what he thought would be a regular City Council meeting. It was the night that Cookie Thornton stormed in with a .44-caliber Magnum and in a mere one minute and 32 seconds killed five people -- two council members, the city's public works director and two police officers -- before turning the gun on himself.I'm going to refrain from making any puns or anything. Apparently the paper won a Sigma Delta Chi award for its online coverage of the shooting (Smith was the online editor for two suburban editions). The article said that Smith was one of a number of people let go throughout the company.
Smith took one of Thornton's bullets in the right hand. He immediately pulled out his cell phone with his left hand to call the Journals. "I said they'd need to send somebody else, because I'd been shot in the hand."
Labels: business practices, dismay, layoffs
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