2 Arrested in Assault on Reporter
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Two woman have been arrested and charged with assaulting WHO (Des Moines) Reporter Maria Lisignoli.
This week, cops busted 20-year-old Riley VerSteegh and 22-year-old Sydney Stuart and charged them with assaulting Lisignoli last month.
Lisignoli says she was with friends waiting for a cab when she saw a group of people fighting. She was not working at the time, but says that's when her journalistic instincts kicked in.
"I just wanted to document what was going on in case something really bad did happen," she says.
Lisignoli took out her phone and captured video of the fight.
In the video, one woman notices the fight being recorded, confronts Lisignoli, and tries taking the cell phone from her hand. Stuart, one of the women arrested, tells Channel 13 she lashed out because she was angry Lisignoli was filming despite being told to stop. From there, Lisignoli says things quickly turned violent.
"The fight started kind of breaking up and three of the girls kind of back away and start walking toward me," she says. "At that point I'm like, okay, people are angry, I should back off, so I turn away and one of them winds up and hits me in the back of the head, and I fall against a car," she says.
She says that she suffered a mild concussion and she missed worked and suffered from fatigue and headaches for several weeks.
Here is the station's story on the incident, including the fight video. Props to the Tribune station for not putting the "exclusive" bug on a story where they interviewed their own Reporter.
H/T WHO
