A television news crew was attacked by multiple people Wednesday night while working on a story about crime in Miami Beach. The NY Daily News reports.
CBS4 reporter Bobeth Yates and photojournalist Ebenezer Mends were in South Beach around 9 p.m. to report on a newly approved resolution banning the sale of alcohol after 2 a.m. in the city’s entertainment district, an effort to crack down on overnight fights and unruly behavior.
While working on the segment, the pair noticed a fight break out on Ocean Drive and turned the camera toward the scene, Yates told viewers after the attack. Several people involved in the brawl then came up to the crew and aggressively demanded they stop filming, video shows.
The footage shows one man trying to cover Mends’ camera as other young men and women shouted at the journalists. Yates said the attackers also knocked down the camera and threw some sort of alcoholic beverage on the pair.
“They started really coming on to Ebenezer and attacking him,” she told her colleagues in the studio. “At one point, maybe four or five people surrounded him. And at that point, I kind of got involved and tried to push them back. They kind of hit me. They went over my head to attack Ebenezer and the camera.”
The crew was not injured, but Yates said their equipment was damaged and that she “was really shaken up.”
“To be honest, I have been reporting for a very long time — don’t want to date myself, but about 20 years — and I’ve never been attacked like this on a story,” she said.
“The ironic part was we were actually covering crime on South Beach and normally we would walk up and down the strip trying to interact with people, getting interviews, but in this instance, they came to us.”
Miami Beach police arrested two suspects following the attack, according to CBS4. Their names were not immediately released, but they were expected to be charged with felony criminal mischief and battery.
Police are still looking for the other attackers.
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