I WIsh I'd Known

Tuesday morning I was scheduled to do beauty shots because my reporter had a national story to front back in the studio. So, I decided to go to the East 55th Marina here in Cleveland to get said beauty shots. The view looks back at the skyline of Cleveland and Lake Erie, plus you can get beautiful sunrise shots from there.

I got to the marina at 4:40a.m. after checking out a water main break which gave me just enough time to set up and get a picture on the air for our 5 a.m. show. Our show started and while I was up on the air, a Park Ranger drove by, flashed his brights and drove off.

I was the only person at the marina except for an empty black Ford Taurus that was parked about thirty feet from me. I did about five shots with only the seagull calls matching my IFB for background noise. Around 6:15 a Cleveland Police car came around and he stopped to chat. We B.S.'ed for a few minutes until they called for another shot from me. The officer left and I went back and finished out the show at 7 a.m.

I headed back to the station, only to get sent out to cover a body found in a house. It turned out to be an accidental CO poisoning. I headed back to the station to bump into our 7:30 photog, Shane, ingesting video he'd shot at the East 55th Marina this morning when it was light. There are cops all over his video.

I ask him what he shot at the marina. He tells me a fisherman found a woman who had been assaulted there. I told Shane I was there since a quarter to five in the morning. His jaw dropped and he said they figure that she was laying there since 4 a.m. The Taurus that was there was hers.

The woman had been in shock when a fisherman found her. She stated screaming when he approached and he called 911. She never screamed, moaned or made any type of noise.

She'd been less than 30 feet from me over a little embankment and I'd never seen her. She was laying there needing help and I never knew it.

I'm still upset about it.