KOB
July 5, 2015
A former CNN investigative reporter shot and killed an armed robber in a motel on Albuquerque’s Westside late Tuesday, according to his wife.
Police responded to the Motel 6 at Iliff Road NW off Coors around 11:30 p.m. APD said they found a man dead in the parking lot with at least one gunshot wound.
Lynne Russell, also a former CNN anchor, told KOB she and her husband, Chuck de Caro, decided to stop at the motel for the night because they were tired after a long day of traveling and had their dog with them. When she went out to the car to get something and returned to the room, she said an armed man was at the door with a handgun.
“He pushed me into the room and that’s when my husband came out of the shower and saw what was happening,” she said. “We tried to calm him, confuse him and do everything we could do to just come out of it in one piece.”
When it became clear to Russell that the man may shoot them, she told him they would look in her purse for something. Russell said she and her husband have concealed carry licenses, and she had a gun inside her purse.
“He wound up taking my husband’s briefcase, and instead of just taking it and leaving, he took it and went over and started firing at my husband. And Chuck fired back and it was a shootout.”
Russell said the man was killed during the exchange. De Caro was struck by three rounds, but he was transported to a local hospital and is expected to survive.