Okay, before I get to this story, I have to share one of my own.

Years ago, I was covering a launch at Kennedy Space Center and I was in the satellite truck talking to a Producer back at the station. While I was on the phone, I heard a very loud bang on the other end of the phone.

I asked the Producer, “what the hell was that?'“

The Producer hung up the phone and said he was going to investigate. He called me back a short time later and said that one of the engineers was working on a piece of equipment when a “capacitor blew” causing the loud bang. I told the Producer that didn’t sound anything like a capacitor.

Well, it turns out it was a gunshot. The Chief Engineer who was with me at the Cape knew he was coming to the Space Center and so he left his gun in his desk back in engineering. A couple of engineers found the gun and one fired it “accidentally.”

The bullet passed through the wall and it ended up being very close to the Producer I was talking to on the phone.

Here is the crazy thing, despite a guy shooting a gun in the station, he didn’t get fired, hell, he didn’t even get suspended.

It was a different time in TV news.

Okay, with that story out of the way, I want to share an email I got from a station in Tampa.

It sure brought back memories.

Here is the email:

“One guy brought his gun to go to the range. It was the morning that a manhunt was going on for a suspect that shot and killed a Pinellas County Sheriff Deputy on the Howard Franklin Bridge right next to Bay News 9 studio.

The guy saw all the police activity and thought he might "need it". He was showing it to another guy in the station, the other guy has the gun and tries to clear the chamber and proceeds to shoot himself in the leg. One shot through two parts of his legs, the thigh, and the calf. They didn't want to tell anyone.

They called 911 and went out to the parking garage leaving a trail of blood down the hallway. Meanwhile, a Reporter covering the manhunt hears there's been a shooting in the Bay News 9 parking garage and starts texting the Producer. So the people in the building start thinking that the guy police are hunting is in the garage or was in the building because of the trail of blood.

The engineering department has two openings now.”

Huh, my engineer didn’t even miss lunch.