UPDATE-Anne Pressly has died of her attacks, after a brief period of seeming recovery. The swelling in her brain had gone down considerably, which the doctor's took as an encouraging sign. Her pain medication was lowered, but unfortunately, she never regained consciousness or communicated with anyone. Obviously, she was unable to identify her attacker, who the police suspects was a burglar. There is evidence that whoever the perpetrator was used her credit card Monday at a gas station a few miles from her home.
The following is taken from the KATV news website. Pressly was a popular local morning news anchor for the station, and recently had a small role in the recently released Oliver Stone film W, in which she portrayed conservative pundit Anne Coulter.
Little Rock - A Little Rock police spokeswoman says detectives still haven't been able to speak with a television anchorwoman critically injured in an attack earlier this week.
Sgt. Cassandra Davis says Anne Pressly's medical condition still stops investigators from asking who attacked her and what happened at her home. Pressly's mother found her daughter battered and bleeding early Monday morning in bed at her home.
Davis says investigators have "no idea when we'll be able to talk to her."
Davis says detectives continue to search for the blunt object used to beat Pressly, 26, around her head and upper body. The sergeant wouldn't say what evidence officers recovered from Pressly's home or searches of her neighborhood near the Little Rock Country Club.
Could be any number of things. A tire iron, baseball bat, hammer, or even a pistol. One thing is for sure, whoever did this wanted to make sure that Pressly was either incapacitated, dead, or disfigured, or any combination thereof. Since everyone who knows her insists that she had no enemies, nor so far as any of them know, any stalkers, it could just be a simple matter of an amateur burglary that got out of hand.
It seems unlikely to have a connection to the movie, although her status as something of a celebrity in the area, and the fact that she lived alone, might have made her something of a target.
I also doubt there is any connections to any news stories she worked on, as she basically just reported the news, which in her case for the most part consisted of restaurants and events, and other kinds of human interest stories. In the picture above, she is seen with a co-worker and wrestling legend Ric Flair.
She did however interview Dick Cheney after meeting him by happenstance, as described here, from the station's website profile page.
Anne Pressly has had more job titles than she can count at KATV, but the one she loves most is Reporter. In her years at Channel Seven, Anne has covered everything from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s run for the White House to Toad Suck Daze in Conway. She has traveled to farthest corners of the Natural State, and has interviewed such notables as Bill Clinton, Maya Angelou, and Alberto Gonzalez.
One of her most memorable interviews happened by chance. On the return trip from a news story in Humphrey, Arkansas, the highway was blocked in front of waterfowl outfitter Mack’s Prairie Wings in Stuttgart. Turns out, Vice President Dick Cheney was inside shopping. He allowed Anne to interview him while he was on the ammo aisle. Cheney told Channel Seven he loves Arkansas. Not as much as Anne does.
Naturally, there is speculation that this might be a hate crime connected to her movie role and, while that seems unlikely and even far-fetched, it does seem strange that it has received little notice in the national press. That hasn't stopped some on the left from speculating that it might be a right-winger angered at her appearance in an alegedly anti-Bush film, nor has it discouraged some on the right from theorizing that it might be a leftist wanting to lash out at a symbol of the despised Coulter.
Neither would seem to make much sense, but on the other hand, neither does the assault, for whatever reason it occurred.
3 comments:
Why post a crime story? What's the moral of the story?
This isn't the first true crime story I ever done. As for the reasons-
*Crime is an important aspect of life. It's something that could happen to anybody, from rich to poor, even a popular local celebrity like this woman.
*There are rumors the attack was politically motivated. That's probably not true, but the fact that a significant number of people believe it is, or might be, makes it an important story from a social as well as political perspective. The belief itself, in other words, that it was or may have been politically motivated, is in and of itself a kind of mirror of the human psyche.
*It's good for people to be more aware of this kind of thing. Sadly, most crime victims are mere statistics to the average person. When this happens to a person of note, its just human nature that people notice it more. If people paid more attention to the average victims and the perpetrators of crimes against them, the increased awareness might result in more being done to bring down crime rates, solve crimes, and more efficient steps to reduce crime all the way around. If this causes people to pay more attention, that at least is one good thing that might come out of this.
*My stats. I got a shitload of hits out of this post. I usually get less readers on Saturday than any other day of the week. Thanks to this story, this Saturday was my biggest day in a week.
Which, by the way, that last point just goes to demonstrate the validity of my second point especially.
There is a blog called Leftwing Crininologist. It is a rare leftist blog, devoted to crime issues.
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