french connection

Newswriting

Annah Todd

French Connection

11/23/2012

The sunny, quiet afternoon in New York was abruptly interrupted when five shots were fired from atop an apartment building. The occurrence triggered a series of events that ended in the deaths of four civilians. 

Pierre Jeantot, 38, of Nice, France is surmised of being assigned to assassinate New York City Police Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle. Doyle works in the Narcotics Division and was investigating Jeantot’s suspected boss, a French drug kingpin. 

Jeantot entered the country on Nov. 4 after a flight from Paris, France. The NYPD reports that he was associated with a crime syndicate that had been laying the groundwork for a major heroin shipment from France to New York City. 

The events began while Isabelle Todd was walking down 57th avenue when the violent outbreak occurred. Todd, 14, was on her way to play a pickup soccer game. Todd goes this way every afternoon. According to Todd, Betty B. Badluck was walking with her granddaughter just a few hundred feet ahead of her. Todd remembers hearing the shots and “then suddenly she was on the ground,” Todd said of Badluck. 

“I was so confused,” Todd said. “I thought her [Badluck’s] legs had just given out or something. And then I saw Doyle running away and I thought he had shot her... I was so scared and disoriented.” 

Emma Stehli, 16, also saw the incident. Stehli lives in the apartment buildings that Jeantot shot from and was on her way out the door to go to meet her friends. Stehli said he saw Badluck fall and then two women ran over to help her. “Next thing I knew,” Stehli said, “I heard Doyle yell, ‘leave her alone there’s a sniper up there.’”

According to Stehli she heard five shots. “Doyle hid behind trees and then like, before I even knew it, he was against the apartment complex wall.” Stehli accounted that Doyle shuffled along the brick wall until he got to an open window where two boys peered out. “I couldn’t really hear,” Stehli said. “But it almost sounded like he was speaking Spanish.”

“I was scared for the guy!” Stehli said, “he went into a nearby door and that was the last I saw.”

After Jeantot unsuccessfully assassinated Doyle, the excitement moved on to the train station on 35th St. Jeantot got on the train and by the time Doyle had gotten there, the train had departed. Doyle heisted Emmet St. Onge’s red 1971 Pontiac LeMans. 

St. Onge, 17, was driving down the road when Doyle jumped out in front of him and demanded that St. Onge get out. “I mean, I was glad I could help out, I guess,” St. Onge said. “But he did total my car.”

Doyle sped off in St. Onge’s car, dodging vehicles and pedestrians and he chased the train under the elevated train tracks. However, onboard the train, Jeantot frantically tried to -_. Jeantot sprinted up to the conductor’s booth and went in. Isabel Huntington sitting just a few seats back, was an eye witness to the event. Huntington was supposed to get off at the next stop. Huntington said that after Jeantot went into the booth with the conductor and the train flew by her stop, she knew that something was wrong. 

“I was getting kind of anxious,” Huntington said. “I ride this train every morning and this had never happened before.” Roland Evans of Brooklyn, a 15-year veteran of the New York City Police Department knocked on the conductor’s booth. 

“Everyone was confused, I think,” Huntington said. “But everyone also seemed really distraught.” 

Jeantot opened the door of the booth and according to Huntington, commanded Evans not to come any closer.

“Evans kept trying to negotiate with him,” said Huntington. “And then Jeantot just whipped out a gun and shot him.” 

Meanwhile inside the booth was conductor Peter Howe, 27, of Queens. Howe died of a heart attack at the controls. Jeantot shot and killed Horatio C. Hornblower, 30 of White Plains.

“Everything was so out of control,” Huntington said. “I’ve never been more terrified in my entire life.”

The train did finally come to halt after it careened into another train parked at the 15th St. Station. 

Jack Callahan, 22, was walking to the stop to catch the train when he saw what had happened. 

“I was off to work when I saw Jeantot run out from the train and then I realized that my train was smushed into the back of another,” Callahan said. “And then I saw this wheezing, out-of-breath man [Doyle] sprint to the base of the stairs with a gun.”

Callahan said that he decided to step back at that point because he didn’t know what was going on, but witnessed Doyle shooting Jeantot and ending the chase.

“Jeantot seemed completely insane,” Callahan said. “Doyle pointed the gun at Jeantot and Jeantot turn to run back up to the platform and bam - Doyle just shot him right in the middle of his back.”

“It is always unfortunate when these incidents end in a loss of life,” the NYPD reported. “We would have preferred to see Jeantot prosecuted in the courts.” However, the NYPD praises Doyle for his bravery and quick thinking under very trying circumstances. This event, although unfortunate, will continue the thorough investigation into what appears to be a major smuggling operation. 

week 9.3

i had a surprisingly hard time with the article on the French Connection. typically, when i am writing about a movie or a book like this there is some creative lenience allowed. however, this was not true with this assignment because the movie was really just a segue for a "event." i had a difficult time thinking about a movie or plot like this but i appreciate the exercise. although my interviewees were confused about how i needed them to respond to my questions (as if they were IN the movie, i think i said this 28592753295 times), they eventually got it. 
as opposed to just a press release, which can be extraordinarily dry, watching an event unfold like that was much easier to write an article on. unrealistic, unfortunately, i know.

week 9.2

as these blog entries begin to wrap up, i have been thinking a lot about them. i like doing them a lot, don't get me wrong, but i love crossing things off my to - do list. but i think it's a good thing - as a result i have been thinking about newswriting and journalism and journalists and reporting and stories and ideas et cetera et cetera et cetera in all of my spare moments. i think it's great - it's kind of like my "news diet" (which, as a side note, i stuck religiously to over thanksgiving break when i had more than 25 minutes of free time a day). instead of reading whats going on around me locally or even worldwide, i am forced to see and pay attention to what is happening around me. i have to seek it out, strive for it. and not only that, i have to recognize if something would even be cut out for a news story. it's exciting, i feel like i'm constantly on the brink of discovering something. or perhaps, maybe not uncovering a breaking news story but something even better. inventing something - drawing two ideas together or learning about something. and that is what is so great about journalism - i get to learn and indulge on the habits of humankind and then turn around and educate others on it. 

week 9.1

as i believe i have mentioned before, my mother is a photographer. she teaches at UNH and Maine College of Art, but also works freelance. her specialty is architectural photography. interestingly enough, my father is a general contractor. my house is quaffed, to say the least, and i feel like my childhood took place in a museum. i have an architecture minor, but that aside, visuals fascinate me. i blame my parents entirely for this. i love fashion, commercials, beautiful people, photographs, youtube clips, sculptures, crown molding, bookcases, newspaper snippets... anything i find aesthetically pleasing gives me an insane rush. i think the amount that i obsess about how things look is way more than "normal" people, though. of course, i've been told my value on appearance is materialistic, et cetera but i really disagree. that said - i think the layout that a journalism piece is in is possibly more important than the actual writing. gasp - sorry. that is just my opinion; its possible that i'm wrong. but it means so much to me. a picture can change someones mind entirely. if the text that the article is written in isn't one i like (for example, comic sans, or trebuchet (sometimes helvetica is almost a turnoff)) i probably won't read it. am i being ignorant? probably. but it matters, and thats my only point. i think a journalist should be hyper aware of things like this. if your tweet isn't quippy or your article isn't appealing or the magazine doesn't publish interesting or compelling photographs, you are definitely loosing audience. 

week 8.3

i just endured my first black friday ever. though, i was not fortunate enough to be a shopper though (not sure if "fortunate" is the correct word here...). don't get me wrong, i love to shop. in fact, i think i even say in my blogger bio thing-y that i am a self proclaimed fashionista. anyways - i'm not one to buy just because i can; sales don't tempt me much unless it's something i want to buy anyways. typically i sleep through the black friday midnight madness and on the actual day (by day, i mean day light) my siblings and cousins and i usual spend the day together (we're all very close). i envision black friday i bit like mean girls when lindsay lohan turns into a lion or whatever and "attacks" her classmates... housewives  battling over toaster ovens and blenders and grannies snatching up the last of the ugly sweaters... any who. it wasn't really like that at all, actually. then again, i could have been in a haze because i was constantly reminding myself that i was being paid (you are being paid, you are being paid) but really, i kept that in the back of my mind all day. so i got to work (i will leave it unnamed in this) at 9:30 and stood around all day in skinny jeans (the day after thanksgiving - ludicrous, i agree) and heeled boots and a sweater. my feet hurt a ton after the first three hours and the door was constantly being opened and closed and it was arctic in the store anyways. basically we sell designer and high end jeans for men and women. we had a "sale" going on for black friday, but it wasn't really much of a sale ... it was still out of most people's price range. "sale" tricked a lot of people to come into the store so my fellow employees and i were hawking around the stacks and stacks of denim barking "can i help you with that?" desperately hoping they would say yes and stop ruining our neat stacks...

so, how do i write a new article about my experience(s) on black friday without it being too column-y... i have before run into small issues of "interest" one may call them. is there simply no way to write about something (other than an event) that i firsthand experienced? i've been thinking about this all day (when i wasn't thinking about getting paid, of course).

week 8.2

this is kind of related to the past two posts i've done, so that brings me to the next topic: is it really safe to write about things we hold near-and-dear to us? i desperately wanted to write an article about veganism and stuck to it. perhaps though, i should have abandoned ship when the red flags were going up about it not going so well. i think if it was something that i wasn't so obsessed with, i would have. instead, i was hell-bent on writing my stupid little piece and giving some attitude about my opinion. wrong? probably not terribly. but if it was about a topic i didn’t care much about, it probably would have been more objective. well, maybe not objective - i tried to walk that fine line carefully and i think i did a good job. however, would i have been quicker to dump the idea if it was something i was less concerned about. i think it's important that i pay more attention to when i need to remove my ego from my writing, it makes a huge difference in the quality. 

week 8.1

i'm a vegan and have been for almost three years. i don't do it directly for the animal rights, or the environmental aspect but for the selfish reason that i simply like the health benefits. last week, i attempted - BOLDLY - to construct an article out of two original, separate ideas and conjoin them. i failed miserably, but i kind of liked it. like i said, because i am a vegan, i have a lot of personal experience about that. it's generally widely known from books like the Omnivores Dilemma and movies like Food, Inc. that some of the environmental problems we are facing are human caused. specifically, from the food we eat - how it's grown and processed and shipped. so after reading and hearing from several, reputable sources that Sandy was caused by global warming, i figured it would be an exciting challenge to tie veganism and Sandy together.
alas, i failed miserably, like i said.
but, i liked it. i had to do a ton of research, which was surprisingly fun. I read a lot about Sandy and global warming, did calculations on CO2 emissions and read a lot about a vegan diet. i felt like a real journalist (bold statement, i know) - pulling things together and like, breaking a story, or something. granted, i sucked at it and it was for my college newswriting class but i guess i'll take what i can get