You've Come a Long Way

Today I think I covered the most bizarre story of my short news career thus far. Yesterday, we ran a story from WNBC about a woman whose newborn baby who died at birth or shortly after was thrown in the trash.

The hospital says it was stillborn, she says it came out alive and died 20 minutes later. This was December 21st. It was taken to the hospital morgue and she heard nothing else until Jan. 3 when hospital officials came to her door to tell her they misplaced the body. And where did they misplace it you might ask? The trash. That's right. The body of her child, who had a name and to her was born and died, was thrown out. Not even in the medical waste, according to her lawyer, but an actual garbage can.

Where does that trash go? Well, since EVERYTHING has a Kentucky connection, here of course. (Who knew Ashland, Kentucky was the dumping ground for trash from New Jersey. Not only that but the trash trains leave New Jersey, heads up north to Buffalo, then through Cleveland and back south to Ashland. Crazy). My story today was on the train arriving and subsequent search. I was called in early to get to Ashland in time for the noon. It's about a two hour drive from Lexington.

Information was hard to come by. The dump management, though very nice and as helpful as they could be, could not say anything because it was a police investigation. The police in Kentucky could not say anything because they were not the lead investigator. New Jersey police were. They also were dealing with CSX, a huge corporation whose dispatch center was in Jacksonville, Florida. Basically, it was a day squeezing water out of a stone. I must say, I got every last drop.

The train got to Russell, Kentucky around 3 this afternoon. That's in Greenup county a short drive from Ashland. We got some soundbites from a trash hauler and the dump and after some calls and convincing, got simple sound from KSP. Minutes before our 5 show, KSP confirmed the train was in Kentucky, it was secured and now it was up to New Jersey to decided what to do. That will happen tomorrow. Either the baby is in those train cars of trash, incinerated at a dump somewhere in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, or, no one knows.

I was very proud I got that information. It was all there was to the story and as far as I know, we were the only ones to get it on the air at 5. We also got two separate packages fed back for 5 and 6 and fed to NBC too. What I enjoyed most, though, was my brush with the past and a reminder that though many days I feel like I'm getting no where, I have gotten somewhere.

Ashland is just on the other side of Ohio. The other side of my coverage area from college and WOUB. Just before we left Ashland I turned on the radio to 89.1 to hear the end of a stellar 5:29 newscast "from the WOUB newsroom". It made me giggle. I guess it makes me a dork, but it also makes me remember my days starting out at WOUB. Getting approved for AM radio, then FM, then TV. The photographer I was with commented how when he was in college they used to watch national stations and point out everything that was wrong, thinking he was the best, even though he was awful. I was the same way, so I just told him, yeah but look where that got us?

Secondly, I ran into a reporter from the NBC station in Huntington, West Virginia, also on the story. He has been in that market forever and was someone I watched while at OU. I introduced myself in passing at the KSP post and when he said his name, I told him yeah, I know, I went to OU and watched you in college. I'm not sure how happy he was to hear that, but the next thing that went through my mind was, I used to watch stories from markets equivalent to where I work now thinking it was all so amazing. Now, it's just another day of work for me. Who would have thought?

It made me happy. It was a good day and it makes me feel lucky that I have gotten so far and that I still have so far I could go. College was nearly four years ago, imagine where I'll be four years from now.