Dancing FBI Agent Charged with Assault After Gun Goes Off During Backflip | Inside Edition
This is an Inside Edition crime news story where an FBI agent at a Denver dance club accidentally drops, mishandles, and fires his gun after performing a backflip in the middle of a circle of dancers. The stray bullet managed to wound an unsuspecting civilian and the FBI agent in question was arrested on second-degree assault charges.
Print: On the Inside Edition website, there is a brief article summarizing the incident: who was involved, where the setting was, and what the consequences were for the perpetrator (FBI agent) and victim (wounded civilian). Within the article, there included direct quotes from the Denver District Attorney’s Office who formally filed charges against the FBI agent who fired the gun, and from the Mile High Spirits, which was the venue where the incident occurred. There were no pictures included in the article that were related to the incident.
Audio: There were no audio-only media presented on the Inside Edition webpage of this story. All audio presented was linked to their video on the story.
Video: There is a video at the top of the webpage right below the headline that outlines the major plot points of this story. An Inside Edition reporter does commentary over two very important videos provided by other news networks that are related to the incident. The first is a short civilian video of the incident provided by KMGH- Denver 7, which is the local news channel that first covered the story. In the video, we clearly see the FBI agent doing an acrobatic dance maneuver, dropping his gun upon his descent, and accidently discharging the firearm when he retrieves it from the floor. The second video is an interview with the victim provided by ABC News where we get the victim’s perspective of the incident. ABC’s interview was edited down into two very short clips by Inside Edition since posting the entire, unadulterated interview would be a copyright violation (stealing someone else’s intellectual property).
Interactivity: There weren’t many elements of the webpage that could be considered interactive. There was a small text block at the end of the article that allowed a reader to email Inside Edition about tips on stories that they found interesting. Inside Edition’s HQ phone number was also provided as an alternative mode of communication. Lately, I have been seeing more and more online articles with comment sections at the end of their webpage, but Inside Edition has not adopted that interactive feature on their website. There were also two links (in the form of Facebook and Twitter’s icons respectively) at the top of the webpage where you could share this story on your own Facebook or Twitter account for your friends/followers to see. On a note unrelated to the story itself, in between every couple of paragraphs within the article as well as at the bottom of the webpage, there were advertisements of articles from other companies that linked directly to their websites. This must be an important source of revenue for Inside Edition considering the sheer number of advertisements on their website.
Main News Element
I believe the main news element that is most present in this story is Interest because of how incredibly bizarre the event was. It might come across as very morbid or unsympathetic to call this story entertaining or funny since the civilian who was shot could’ve died from his injury, but that doesn’t change the fact that my first reaction to the story was to laugh out loud because of how absurd the entire ordeal was. Just the headline itself, “Dancing FBI Agent Charged with Assault After Gun Goes Off During Backflip”, sounds like the plot to an SNL skit. I believe that an argument could be made for the idea that relevance is most present in this story because of our country’s intense political divide on the issue of gun control/safety. If a highly trained FBI agent could do something so careless as to forget to keep the safety on while carrying a loaded gun, what are the chances of an untrained civilian making a similar mistake with their firearm? However, the reason why I didn’t choose relevance is because this story might be too outlandish and peculiar for someone to use as solid evidence for their anti-gun stance. I don’t see the usefulness of this story to the audience except to serve as a reminder to gun owners that they should be vigilant in their practice of gun safety.
Sub News Elements
Impact: The story may have an impact on members of the audience who are passionate about enacting anti-gun legislation in our country, or people who are on the fence on the issue of gun-control and could be swayed either way.
Novelty: The story, albeit unfortunate, is very much out of the ordinary and will be remembered as a very bizarre event.
Prominence: The fact that the perpetrator was an FBI agent definitely raises the prominence of this story than if the accident was committed by a regular civilian, but the story does not reach the levels of prominence as it would if a celebrity had done this.