Reporter goes viral after calling out man who groped her on live TV

A news reporter has called out a man who groped her on live TV while she was covering a running event over the weekend.

A news reporter has called out a man who groped her on live TV while she was covering a running event over the weekend.

Alex Bozarjian, who works for an NBC affiliate in Savannah, Georgia, was reporting on the local race from the Talmadge Bridge on Saturday.

“Woah, not expecting that,” she laughs as a runner in a gorilla suit passes by waving at the camera. “Some people also dress up in costumes for this bridge run, so it’s very exciting.”

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As she says “exciting”, she abruptly cuts off as a man wearing a navy blue top, hat and dark glasses appears to grope her. She looks visibly shocked as she continues her coverage while staring in the direction of the man.

A clip of the incident has been viewed more than 7.5 million times since being posted to Twitter on Saturday. A tweet by Bozarjian later that day also went viral with nearly 146,000 retweets.

To the man who smacked my butt on live TV this morning: You violated, objectified, and embarrassed me. No woman should EVER have to put up with this at work or anywhere!! Do better. https://t.co/PRLXkBY5hn

— Alex Bozarjian (@wsavalexb) December 7, 2019

“To the man who smacked my butt on live TV this morning: You violated, objectified, and embarrassed me,” she wrote. “No woman should EVER have to put up with this at work or anywhere!! Do better.”

A spokeswoman for the Savannah Police Department told NBC News they had spoken to the reporter. “I can’t discuss it further, but it’s up to Alexandrea on how she wants to handle the situation,” she said.

“All I can say is we have made contact with Alexandrea and we are definitely going to be working with her in any capacity on how she’d like to move forward with this incident.”

On Sunday, the Savannah Sports Council said it had identified the man. “Yesterday at the Enmarket Savannah Bridge Run a reporter from WSAV was inappropriately touched by a registered participant of the event,” the group said on Twitter.

“Our title sponsor, Enmarket and the Savannah Sports Council take this matter extremely seriously and fully condemn this individual’s actions. Yesterday afternoon we identified him and shared his information with the reporter and her station.”

It added, “We will not tolerate behaviour like this at a Savannah Sports Council event. We have made the decision to ban this individual from registering for all Savannah Sports Council owned races.”

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