"I want to show the faces, the pain, and the devastation behind this heinous crime."
-- Anchor and hit-and-run victim Sade Baderinwa introducing a WABC-7 story

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WABC-7 anchor Sade Baderinwa, who spent five months off the air after being hit by a car in New Jersey last year, advocated hit-and-run awareness on the news Tuesday. "We want to remind people," Baderinwa said of partnering with the American Automobile Association to speak out about hit-and-runs, "if you are a driver, take responsibility. Do the right thing: stop, get the person help. Don't let an accident turn into a crime." She also talked about what has followed the night she was hit in Hackensack, N.J. "Despite ten long months of rehab, I've lost full use of my arm," Baderinwa said in a packaged report leading the 5:30 p.m. half-hour of her newscast. "Still, I was one of the lucky ones."

Baderinwa spoke to family members of Giuseppe Papandrea, killed at 61 when he was hit by a car in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. "I couldn't believe that somebody could just leave him like an animal to die in the street," wife Loretta told Ch. 7. The suspect in that 2002 incident later spent six months in prison. The driver who hit Baderinwa was never caught. The tie-in for the story was a hit-and-run in West Haverstraw on Tuesday that severely injured a truck driver who had crossed the street to get a sandwich. Baderinwa said she reported on three hit-and-runs the week she returned to work anchoring for Ch. 7. Another report tonight is set to focus on toughening the penalties for hit-and-run offenses.

A dispute with police over interviewing someone near a crime scene ended with WEWS-5 reporter Curtis Jackson locked in an Ohio jail late Sunday. Jackson was covering the suspicious death of an elderly man when he says a woman who had called Maple Heights police about the death agreed to talk to him off-camera in her apartment. But though Jackson claimed he had a right to go into the building, where he said the public was being allowed, officers said he was trespassing on a crime scene and arrested him. "You're arresting me for obstruction when I was invited upstairs," Jackson said repeatedly to an officer before being put in a squad car. Jackson was released early Monday and has not been charged with anything. "We have a significant concern when police prevent us from talking to potential sources of news," Ch. 5 news director John Butte told the Plain Dealer. Jackson, a new weekend anchor at the station, has also worked for WFXT-25 in Boston and cable station BET. The coroner has since ruled the man in the story died of natural causes.