News Reporter Shares Story of Survival After Being Shot 5 Times By Nicole Acosta

A TV news reporter is sharing her story for the first time since surviving a shooting last year.

Winnie Dortch, a reporter at Chicago’s WGN-TV, was shot five times by her daughter’s father on Oct. 7, 2024, in Cleveland, Ohio, she told 19 News.

Dortch had dropped off their daughter at school that morning when Bryant Carter, who had been tailing her, forced her out of her car at gunpoint and into his, WGN-TV reported.

“I remember him saying, ‘You know if you get out, I’ll shoot you,'” she recalled to WGN-TV. She added that she got out of the car and ran away before falling on the ground.

“I’m just looking at the blood, and then I have to turn around because I’m thinking he’s coming to me after that fall. No, instead I turn around and he’s flat on his back,” she said, per the news station. Carter had died by suicide.

Dortch said her road to recovery was difficult, having woken up in the hospital three days later unable to talk.

“I was shot in the mouth, which hurts the most because that’s part of my career,” Dortch told WGN-TV. “I feel like he took something from me.”

She alleged Carter was verbally and physically abusive over the years, noting that he became upset when she was offered a position at WGN-TV about a month before the shooting, which led to her move from Cleveland back to her hometown of Chicago. She also said she filed a restraining order against him but later had it removed, 19 News reported.

“I kept all this bottled up,” Dortch told the outlet. “Because you don’t want that image.”

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She hopes sharing her story will inspire others.

“I fought for my life during the relationship and at the end, at the last second,” Dortch told 19 News. “For me, I survived, and so I want to let other people know they can survive too.”