A TV news woman is telling her story for the first time after surviving a shooting last year.
Winnie Dortch, a reporter for Chicago’s WGN-TV, was shot five times by her daughter’s father on October 7, 2024, in Cleveland, Ohio, according to 19 News.
Dortch had dropped off their kid at school when Bryant Carter, who had been tailing her, forced her into his car at gunpoint, according to WGN-TV.
“I remember him saying, ‘You know, if you get out, I’ll shoot you,'” she told WGN-TV. She stated that she jumped out of the car and fled before collapsing on the ground.
“I’m just looking at the blood, and then I have to turn around because I believe he’s approaching me after that fall. “No, instead I turn around and he’s flat on his back,” she told the news outlet. Carter died by suicide.
Dortch stated her recuperation was challenging, since she awoke in the hospital three days later unable to speak.
“I was shot in the mouth, which hurts the most because that’s part of my career,” Dortch told the television station. “I feel like he took something from me.”
She claimed Carter was verbally and physically violent over the years, and that he became unhappy when she was offered a position at WGN-TV approximately a month before the shooting, prompting her return from Cleveland to her hometown of Chicago. She also claimed to have filed a restraining order against him, which was later lifted, according to 19 News.
“I kept all of this bottled up,” Dortch told the newspaper. “Because you don’t want that image.”
She hopes that her tale may inspire others.
“I fought for my life during the relationship and at the end, at the last second,” Dortch told CNN. “For me, I survived, and so I want to let other people know they can survive too.”
