Couple fought back against an assailant, killed him.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Two former CNN journalists were involved in a wild shootout in a New Mexico motel room, with one of them wounded three times during the fracas.
Former CNN and Headline News anchor Lynne Russell and her husband, former CNN reporter Chuck de Caro, were involved in a fatal shooting at an Albuquerque, New Mexico, motel, police told NBC News on Wednesday.
Albuquerque police said Russell was accosted by a man in the parking lot of a Motel 6 and was then pushed into her room.
De Caro — a former investigative reporter, Special Forces member and military expert — and the man then got into an altercation, and both were shot, police said.
The assailant was unresponsive when officers arrived and died at a hospital, while de Caro was merely wounded.
“I recognized what I had seen before — I was a deputy sheriff for many years — that this guy was used to this,” said Russell, who is herself a licensed private investigator and former Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff’s deputy with two martial arts black belts. “I suddenly realized that it wouldn’t bother him at all to pull the trigger.”
When the man started firing at De Caro, who was just exiting the bathroom when Russell and her assailant entered, he fired back, “and it was a shootout,” according to Russell.
Russell said the guns she and De Caro were in possession of were legal, something police are still investigating, reported CNN.
“I am really proud of him,” Russell said of her husband. “I thank him over and over for saving my life. He really is my hero,” she continued.