WTHR reporter Emily Longnecker says she’s OK after being attacked last Friday.
Longnecker wrote about the ordeal on her Facebook page by saying if you were watching the station and saw a report about a woman being attacked in broad daylight in downtown Indianapolis, it was her.
She said a man grabbed for her wallet and started punching her when she was getting out of her car. He also tried to push her back into the vehicle.
“It was just my instinct,” wrote Longnecker. “I began to scream loudly and it seemed forever before he stopped hitting me. At one point, he ran around to the front of my car, turned around and looked me. I was still in shock and couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was like the world was moving in slow motion.”
“Then, as we stood there for a moment looking at each other,” she said. “I felt a rage well up inside of me and that feeling just took over. I began screaming and chasing this man down the street. Others who had witnessed the final moments of the attack and heard the screaming, joined the chase.”
Longnecker said the cops got there quickly and caught the guy.
“I later learned, the man who attacked me, had been released from prison in April after serving 20 years on a 40-year sentence for rape,” she said.
“So there you have it, that’s the story,” she wrote. “That’s the one I would have told on air, just like I’ve asked of many of you to do. And that’s the story I will tell if and when I have to face this man in court.”