What follows is a newswriting exercise. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
You're back at the Centerville Gazette. It's the day after the shooting outside the Fandango Bar & Grill on Wilson Street in the Grungeville section of the city. You phone the cops to see if they have anything new on the case.
Lt. Jane Ortlieb tells you that early this morning they arrested an ex-con named Frederick Johnson, 32, in connection with the shooting. Turns out a patron at the bar knew Johnson and identified him as the shooter for detectives. Police tracked him to his apartment on Barboza Street just a few blocks from the bar, but he didn't show up there until this morning. He was arrested without incident.
Ortlieb says Johnson confessed to detectives that he was selling cocaine to the victim, Peter Wickham, when the shooting occurred. But Johnson claims the shooting was an accident; he says he and Wickham were arguing over money and got into a shoving match. Johnson says he pulled out the gun just to scare Wickham, but Wickham grabbed the gun and it went off accidentally as they struggled. Wickham was hit in the head. Ortlieb says Johnson is due to be arraigned at Centerville District Court later today.
Ortlieb says Johnson has a rap sheet that includes convictions for assault and drug dealing. He was paroled two months ago after serving two years on a drug-dealing charge. The gun used in the shooting was stolen; cops found it in a trash bin outside Johnson's apartment.
You call Mayor Wiley's office to see if they have any comment on Wickham's death. You get Susan Benedetto, the deputy mayor, on the line. She says Wickham had been the mayor's press secretary for about two years. "Everyone in Mayor Wiley's office is deeply saddened by this," she says, reading from a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Wickham's family."
You ask Benedetto if anyone in the mayor's office had any inkling that Wickham had been using cocaine. "Off the record," she says, "we all thought something was going on with him. His behavior had become more and more erratic in the last few months. Mayor Wiley was about to fire him because of it. But we didn't know he was using drugs."
Combine these latest developments with the information from your original shooting story. Write this follow-up piece in 90 minutes or less.
Read the first shooting story here.
Read about writing follow-up stories here.
Find more great newswriting exercises here.
