Tonight, convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner faces the firing squad. We’ve been covering this case since he killed his first victim, his second victim, and was convicted 25 years ago. Finally, all of his appeals have run out, he’s had his last meal of steak and lobster and apple pie, and now waits in a solitary observation cell for his impending death. He’s spoken with his family, and said goodbye for the last time. The only thing that can save him now is a Supreme Court decision to stay his execution. The governor has already said he’s had 25 years of fair trials, appeals, and decisions, and will not give him an 11th hour reprieve. We’ve planned this to be a busy news day with the world watching us use such an archaic method of execution against this monster.
This is Gardner.
This is where he will die tonight at Midnight.
The quasi-planned news we also had today was the University of Utah’s acceptance into the Pac-10 conference. Yesterday, we discovered the official invitation. Today, we received the official acceptance via live press conference from the U. With this, we planned not much else for our reporters, as these are two monumental stories to hit our state.
In the middle of our noon newscast today, we got word of a child abduction. If there’s anything that can trump and execution, it’s an abduction. A little 8 year old blonde girl was out on her scooter near a local high school, when two Hispanic men veered through traffic, stopped in front of her, and threw her into the car, leaving her scooter behind. There’s much debate in the newsroom on this one. If this was a parent, or relative, why would they have left the scooter in the middle of the sidewalk? Just after our Pac-10 press conference, an Amber Alert was issued for the little girl. Now we can only hope that she’s OK, and that the perpetrators are found soon, and this was a simple parenting matter, and not an actual abduction. We hope.
THEN, as if we didn’t already have enough going on today, we get word that the DUI arrest video of former Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack is being released. The press release originally said it would be a week before the courts released the tape, pending a DPS appeal. Apparently that happened and only the Trib knew about it. We got a tweet from them saying they were getting the video today. Now the rush is on to get this video, which allegedly shows the disgraced politician’s arrest that night after spending time at Liquid Joe’s with a lobbyist. I’m not sure how we’re going to cram it into already full shows, but it has to happen. This has to be the easiest day for producers, because the shows pretty much wrote themselves tonight.
And it’s only ten to five. What else can the news gods throw at us? Just a peek at the adrenaline rush in the newsroom tonight.
On a less stressful note, our living room is back to normal! Now for the rest of the house…
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