Tough Newscaster Bumped by a Car on Live TV and She Pops Right Back Up
“I’m a little sore, but I’m totally ok,” 25-year-old Tori Yorgey says.
Reporter Tori Yorgey was just about to give a live update from a water main break site for WSAZ-TV in West Virginia when she suddenly dropped out of view of the camera. Yorgey, 25, had set up for her live shot in a corner of the apartment complex where the news was happening. The water crew told her she’d be out of the way there; she didn’t expect any danger.
Then an SUV rolled right through the reporter’s setup and clipped her with the driver’s side of the vehicle, knocking Yorgey to the ground.
Yorgey wasn't anticipating being sideswiped by a car, nor did she see the headlights creep up on her from outside of her peripheral vision. Anchor Tim Irr’s eyes widen as soon as his colleague appears to fall on live TV, and he keeps his cool. He can’t see what’s happening from the news desk and he’s momentarily frozen. Then he hears Yorgey’s voice off camera saying, “Oh my God, I just got hit by a car, but I’m OK. I just got hit by a car, but I’m OK, Tim.”
Incredibly, the young Philadelphia-born newscaster pops right back up and shows her face on camera with the barest pause. Meanwhile, the driver stops to check on her victim, and Yorgey goes out of her way to assure the distraught woman that she was fine. (I mean, Rocky Balboa was from Philadelphia too and people there are fierce. This is one more example.)
“Ma’am, you are so sweet, and you’re ok,” Yorgey says to her. “That’s live TV for ya. It’s all good!”
That’s when Yorgey reveals she has been in this situation before: “I actually got hit by a car in college too. Just like that.”
Later, during a podcast with Preston and Steve of WMMR, Yorgey explains she was walking home from the library one night when she was a student at Penn State. She was walking past an alleyway and a driver rolled past the stop, hitting Yorgey. But it was “just a little push” as far as she was concerned.
This could have had a much different ending, and Yorgey has shown up in interviews from all over the country in the past few days to tell her story. She says "accidents happen" and has maintained a gracious attitude toward the driver. Yorgey's boss took her to the hospital right away to make sure everything checked out, and Yorgey made sure in follow-up interviews to let people know that Irr is like "her work dad" and he called her immediately after the live broadcast.
It was her last week at WSAZ, as the reporter is headed back to Pennsylvania to work for WTAE Pittsburgh, where hopefully she'll avoid any other incidents with moving vehicles.
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